Ten former presidents of Latin America, including Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, as well as the former president of Spain José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, signed a public letter in which they ask the IMF to “assume responsibility” for having granted “the record credit” of US$45 billion to the Argentine government of Mauricio Macri in 2018, “in order to benefit him electorally and limit the next administrations,” referring to the administration of the Frente de Todos.
The signatories also demanded “the immediate elimination of the surcharges on the loan” and that the agency grant Argentina terms that allow “economic growth without brutal adjustments or fiscal restrictions” subject to impoverishment, according to the document accessed exclusively by Télam and which signed by Lula, Zapatero and Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Ernesto Samper (Colombia), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Manuel Zelaya (Honduras) and Leonel Fernández (Dominican Republic), as well as former foreign ministers and leaders of the region.
The statement is titled “The IMF must assume its responsibility” and cites a fragment of the letter that Pope Francis sent in April 2021 to the IMF and the World Bank for the spring meetings (of the Northern Hemisphere) of those organizations, in which the Pontiff urged to support the functioning of the markets with “laws and regulations that ensure they contribute to the common good, ensuring that finance, rather than being merely speculative, works for societal goals that are sorely needed during the current global health emergency.”
Regarding the consequences of a possible agreement, the letter states that the conditions for rescheduling Argentina’s debt maturities should not “subject the Argentine people to conditions of impoverishment.”
The text was also signed by leaders of the region such as Celso Amorim (Brazil), Senator Lucía Topolansky (Uruguay), Defense Minister Jorge Taiana, the coordinator of the Puebla Group Marco Enríquez Ominami (Chile), the current Bolivian ambassador to the UN Diego Pary and former foreign ministers Ricardo Patiño ( Ecuador) and Jorge Lara Castro (Paraguay), among others.
The claim to the body headed by Kristalina Georgieva gathered the signatures of personalities from Latin America from an initiative of the Brotherhood Group, by which various figures of Latin American politics plan joint actions, which are coordinated by the vice president of the Mercosur Parliament (Parlasur) Oscar Laborde, the head of the Foreign Relations Commission of the Lower House Eduardo Valdés (Frente de Todos-CABA) and former President Lugo, of Paraguay.
The granting of a stand-by agreement to Argentina for a record amount in 2018, during the management of Cambiemos, In turn, it triggered the debate among jurists specialized in Public International Law, such as the Brazilian Karina Patricio Ferreira Lima, from the University of Leeds, co-author of a 38-page paper together with the British economist Chris Marsh, a former official of the IMF itself and an economist graduated from Cambridge, who argue that the credit given to the government of Mauricio Macri should be declared “null” for failing to comply with the fundamental rules of the body.
“Given that Argentina does not have the resources to repay the program, there should be a period that allows the country to recover. This means in practice establishing an interest-free loan, and the repayment of all interest and charges to date”, proposed the two academics in that study, which was disseminated in recent weeks.
In parallel, a case is being processed in the Argentine Courts based on the complaint made by the National Treasury Attorney, as a body that defends the interests of the State in legal disputes, in which the award to Argentina is investigated. of the loan of 55 billion dollars (of which around 45 billion were received) by the IMF as a fact of fraudulent administration: the file is in charge of federal judge María Eugenia Capuchetti.
Lula (Brazil), Zapatero (Spain), Lugo (Paraguay), Morales (Bolivia), Samper (Colombia), Rousseff (Brazil), Correa (Ecuador), Zelaya (Honduras) and Fernández (Dominican Republic), the signatory former presidents
This Wednesday’s public letter was added to other interventions in support of the country at the crossroads of the debt, such as the one made twenty days ago by the Celac foreign ministers at the end of their meeting in Buenos Aires, where they included a paragraph in the official communiqué stating their support “for Argentina in the negotiations with the IMF to reach an agreement that allows it to continue its economic recovery, improve its social situation and refinance your debt.
In the document made public by the Hermandad Group, they also signed the current vice president of Peru, Dina Boularte; members of the Parliaments of the region, such as the Paraguayan senators Jorge Querey and Esperanza Martínez (Guasú Front), their Argentine counterpart Oscar Parrilli (FdT-Neuquén), the Uruguayan deputy Daniel Caggiani (Broad Front) and the Mercosur parliamentarians Víctor Santa María (head of the FdT bloc) and Cecilia Britto (head of the Argentine delegation).
