SUBSCRIBERS EXCLUSIVE
The President once again questioned the interest rate applied by the IMF to Argentina. He shared a dinner with the leaders of Chile and Ecuador, with whom he has just starred in a diplomatic conflict.
In the G20, in Rome and in the G7, in Germany. Also at the UN headquarters in New York or at Celac, in Buenos Aires. For more than two years Alberto Fernández has insisted on every international forum that he visits to claim for a “new international financial architecture” and against the surcharges paid by emerging and indebted countries like Argentina. The XXVIII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in Santo Domingo was no exception.
In the convention center where the meeting took place, in the capital of the Dominican Republic, just 150 meters from the Caribbean Sea, Fernández renewed its request for the IMF to eliminate the surcharges and this time he did not deprive himself -as a good part of his coalition does- of question the credit agency in harsh terms.
“The rates and surcharges that the International Monetary Fund imposes on indebted countries they are abusive. That reality collides with that international financial architecture, which I already questioned before,” said the President, who spoke in third place, after Ecuadorian Guillermo Lasso, with whom he has just starred in a high-voltage diplomatic exchange.
The President alluded to the recent shocks in the financial system in Silicon Valley; USA; and in Switzerland. “The central world that passively allows these bubbles to inflate, runs to the aid of the “system” before the explosion so that the domino effect that we have already experienced fifteen years ago does not appear again (…) The current financial system does not have to be helped anymore. We must drastically change it,” he said in the 6-page speech in which he worked with Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero.
The Government wanted a claim on the need for a new financial architecture to be included in the final document of the speech. It was not possible. It collided with the dynamics of an organism that defines by consensus instead of majorities.
The final document that was discussed for months and endorsed by the bloc’s 19 heads of state and government did not mention Russia or Ukraine in any of its 11 pages, much less the invasion.
In the corridors of the Hotel El Embajador where the bulk of the international leaders were staying, they pointed out that Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua they definitively blocked that possibility. The pressure from Spain and Portugal was not enough so far to impose their vision in the first face-to-face summit since the pandemic. Fernández did refer in his speech, without euphemisms, to the “Russian invasion” in Ukraine.
For the president of the Spanish government Pedro Sanchez that landed in Santo Domingo minutes after the President and a day after King Felipe VI, represented a setback. The Spanish head of government – who met this Saturday morning with Fernández and the representative of the European Union Joseph Borrell– is one of the most categorical European leaders when it comes to condemning Russia’s responsibility in the first war on the old continent in 70 years.
In the Argentine Foreign Ministry they recognize that the absences of the Brazilian Lula, who had to travel to China (but finally suspended due to pneumonia) and the Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador “devalued” the Summit. The Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega also hit the foul, like the controversial Salvadoran executive Nayib Bukele. The Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro accused a case of covid-19 at the last moment..
The final document, somewhat laundered for Argentine officials, is a kind of declaration of good intentions to ensure the sustainable development of the region after the pandemic. One of the axes of the document and of the entire meeting revolved around actions to mitigate climate change. The President, in his speech, insisted on the need for urgent actions and gave as an example the environmental, social and fiscal consequences of the drought that Argentina is going through.
Argentina, however, scored a partial diplomatic victory: it managed to get the leaders of the Summit to issue a special communication on Malvinas in which they urge the parties to return to the negotiating table. “It was our greatest achievement”, they were honest in the national delegation. It is not the first time that the Summit has ruled on the matter. The President thanked him in his presentation.
The relationship with the Ecuadorian Lasso remained cold and distant, according to the description of the delegation. The Chilean Gabriel Boric, on the other hand, invited Fernández to the trans-Andean country to celebrate the 205th anniversary of the battle of Maipú.
Special Envoy to Santo Domingo
