MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei needs to change the course of his government, warns CFK

”What's the use of 60% of the votes if people then go hungry and do not make ends meet? CFK wondered

Former two-time Argentine head of State Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) made a rentrée under the limelight Saturday at the opening of the President Néstor Kirchner Stadium in Quilmes, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in her first public appearance since completing her first term as vice president on Dec. 9 last year. She seized the opportunity to criticize the Libertarian administration of Javier Milei for the unnecessary hardships imposed on the people.

In her 72-minute message, CFK spoke of the “useless sacrifice” of Argentines and denied Milei's claims that a financial surplus has been achieved. “It is as if you at home do not pay the rent” and the other expenses, CFK argued. “No, brother! It is not a surplus, look how much you owe! Surplus from where?” she added, regarding the Federal Government's debt with companies and provinces. “You talk about a historical feat for one quarter. And we did it for six years, but we were not national heroes,” she said about her late husband's presidency (2003-2008) followed by herself.

The former president valued the legitimacy of the origin of the government of La Libertad Avanza, although she considered that there must also be legitimacy in the management.

“You may have been voted by 60% [of the people], but if, afterward, when you are a government the people go hungry, lose their jobs, unemployment increases, they cannot make ends meet, what is the point?” she insisted. “The President has to give a change of direction to these policies” she also pointed out. “We built legitimacy in management.”

In CFK's view, the Libertarian government “has no stabilization plan, it has only an adjustment plan” which “more than anarcho-capitalism, sounds like anarcho-colonialism.” That was how she described Milei's model of a country with an extractivist economy of natural resources and without an industry. “We do not agree on that,” she replied. “The great drama that is coming is unemployment,” she warned while asking the ruling party “not to turn Argentina into a wasteland of unemployed people.” However, she acknowledged that Milei was a “dogmatic” president who “does not understand.”

“When the hat does not fit, do not shrink your head, enlarge your hat and we are going to help you because if it goes bad for you, it goes bad for all Argentines,” she underlined. She then warned Milei against turning “Argentina into a country where they take away the wealth and eliminate the middle class.” Hence, “It is necessary to re-discuss the country we want, we have an immense responsibility as opposition to re-discuss this country” because Milei “foreshadows us an economy of extractivist, pre-capitalist character” which ”reminds me of the Argentina of the Viceroyalty of the River Plate (1777-1810)“ and ”we shall not be a colony again“.

She also urged the opposition leaders ”to stop discussing stupid things“ and avoid internal fights to focus on ”the people's problems“ and positively change their lives.

Regarding April 23's federal university march, CFK underlined that ”we would not have so many university students if we had not created the universities we created.“ Milei ”talks about indoctrination“ but ”if we had indoctrinated“ the students ”he would not be president,“ CFK argued. ”I do not believe in this right and left, they are categories of thought alien to our history and reality, they come from the colonizing countries,” she also noted.