However, the data does not seem to help. Massa’s management of the economic portfolio is burdened with a 37-point increase in year-on-year inflation, which in June reached 114%, and a currency that has devalued around 100% in relation to the official dollar since he took office. a little less than a year ago.
Without forgetting that, in addition, the pre-candidate bears the wear and tear of being part of the four years of the current government that, according to the view of many analysts, did not satisfy his own or others.
A source from Sergio Massa’s environment told CNN that the strategy to get along with this scenario is to focus on maintaining political order in the face of an opposition with a high-voltage internal dispute, and to provide management news. In addition, he warns that formally he still has to win the primary elections in August in which Massa will face the other Unión por la Patria candidate, the social leader Juan Grabois.
There will be time to formalize a plan for a future mandate. Despite this, public statements are giving some clues about the way forward.
The pillars of Massa’s government plan
The fiscal balance, the commercial surplus, a competitive exchange rate and development with inclusion are its main axes, according to what he said in a television program on Channel 5 Argentina (C5N). “What is coming forward has more income distribution, more public education, more investment in universities,” he promised, although with one caveat: “If I can finish stabilizing the economy.”
The economic question is his great challenge, the balance between what he can do today to fish for the illusion of what is to come. The relationship with the International Monetary Fund is one of the topics on the next president’s agenda, at least that is how he perceives it himself. “The biggest solution that Argentina has is to sell what it makes to the world,” he said in a campaign spot.
In this line, both Massa and his allies in the government present the inauguration of the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline and the continuation of the works for a second section as one of the keys to their offer of a prosperous future: “Our lithium, our gas, our oil, what the fields produce, what the industries produce, that more and more is sold to the world because that will give us the dollars to be free, to be sovereign”.
Education and work as promises of social mobility
Tertiary and university training is what guarantees progress, according to the minister’s speech. In this regard, he proclaims that he wants to incorporate training in technology and tools related to the “new labor market”, according to his own words, to the educational curriculum at the secondary level.
“Fourth and fifth year they have to have programming and robotics compulsorily,” he said in the interview with C5N and added that “it will be essential to accompany” this initiative with a program for insertion into the labor market.
In Argentina, the unemployment rate is 6.9%, and 36.7% of salaried workers are in the informal sector. At this point, Massa proposes a tax simplification for small and medium-sized companies with the purpose of giving facilities to launder their employees.
The solution to pickets and roadblocks, which are one of the most frequent forms of protest in the country, is another of the issues being debated in the campaign. Opposing the opposition pre-candidates, the Unión por la Patria candidate maintains that the repressive use of state force during a protest must be the last instrument to be put into practice. Opposition pre-candidates like Patricia Bullrich have found a banner that garners sympathy in certain sectors of the electorate in the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires, where street occupations and multiple blockades are a daily problem.
Finally, Sergio Massa promised to fight against insecurity, crime and drug trafficking something with which it also seems to respond to some axes of the opposition campaign, and which sectors of Peronism consider to belong to the right with investment in prevention and criminal intelligence systems.
He also said in the dialogue with C5N that he would use his good relationship with the United States, “the one that some criticize me so much” in reference to the electorate of his own space that has a look of suspicion with the ties of the candidate, in the fight against money laundering. “I take the lead,” she stated.
