The governor of Jujuy and leader of the UCR, Gerardo Morales, assured that he would not like Mauricio Macri to become president of Argentina again in 2023 and considered that the PRO “made mistakes” when he governed.
Morales gave a telephone interview to the Télam news agency from Dubai, where he is to participate in a tour of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, along with national government officials and leaders of the provinces of the so-called Norte Grande.
Morales also assessed that the half-sanction that the bill in agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) obtained this week in the Chamber of Deputies “was a triumph of dialogue over folly.”
The following are the main excerpts from Morales’ interview with Télam:
Télam: Do you think that the opposition should add more political sectors in case of reaching the Government in 2023?
Gerard Morales: We must speak with sectors of the Front of All (FdT). There is no room in politics for the irruption of anti-democratic factions on the left or right.
T: How do you envision the political future of former President Mauricio Macri?
GM: I don’t see him with presidential ambition, but he is still a strong leader of the PRO and is the leader of JxC, beyond that I would not like him to be President again. We have to solve these internal with the PRO in the STEP. The next President must be radical.
T: As head of the UCR, how do you see the party at this political juncture, after having played a minor role in Cambiemos during the Macri government?
GM: What happened was not the fault of the PRO, but our responsibility. The PRO obviously marked the field and advanced and in any case we were the ones who had to react. But things have changed. They made mistakes in government.
T: The UCR, on the one hand, shows more visibility in recent times, but it also exhibits setbacks, such as the breakdown of the bloc in Deputies…
GM: The relationship with (the national senator) Martín Lousteau is good and we are working for the reunification of the bloc. Time is running out and I hope that in the coming weeks we will finish resolving that. The division in Deputies weakens the UCR.
“We have to talk to sectors of the Frente de Todos (FdT). There is no room in politics for the irruption of anti-democratic factions on the left or right”
T:-What balance do you make of the negotiations that were carried out in Congress so that the agreement with the IMF obtained half sanction in Deputies?
GM: It seems to me that it was the best expression that the crack does not serve the Argentines. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years. You have to talk. That was what was done and sanity ended up prevailing, despite the fact that there were ‘hawks’ that jumped for the jugular.
T: In Together for Change (JxC) there were internal differences before reaching a consensus to vote on the project…
GM: Yes, it took time. But the differences were settled. The IMF cares more about the political endorsement of the refinancing than the fine print.
T:-How did you observe the different political forces in this debate?
GM: On the one hand, the libertarians, the left and a sector of Kirchnerism ended up voting together. But beyond that, he ended up winning the dialogue and Sergio Massa played an important role in this as head of the Chamber of Deputies. JxC’s attitude was also important.
T: How do you think the FdT and JxC were positioned after this debate?
GM: I think that since JvC we have acted without prevailing the outburst of an opposition with an irrational attitude. When the PRO block got up from the premises (during the Legislative Assembly on March 1) they ended up making the differences in the FdT invisible. I see JxC well, to the extent that we continue down that path and build on the basis of proposals to reach 2023 with government programs.
“I would not like him to be President again. We have to solve these internal issues with the PRO in the PASO. The next President must be radical”
T: There are several opposition referents heading to the presidential elections next year. Are you working on concrete proposals? Do you think there should be self-criticism from the opposition about what the government of Mauricio Macri was?
GM: Several technical teams are already working on proposals. On the side of radicalism we are promoting and organizing the work of the Alem Foundation. We started with public policy institutes in all provinces and articulated with Fundación Pensar (PRO), the Hannah Arendt Foundation of the Civic Coalition and the institute launched by Miguel Ángel Pichetto. Regarding self-criticism, society did not vote for us in 2019 because there are things we did wrong. We ended up disappointing society as a whole and I don’t want it to happen to us again in 2023. But we all have responsibilities. The PRO doesn’t like me saying this. The Government, for its part, cannot have a unilateral view either. They believe that they have no responsibilities and so far in Alberto’s (Fernández) administration, the debt has already reached 65 billion dollars.
T: What is the importance of this tour for Argentina and the northern provinces of the country?
GM: The objective is to generate more investments for Argentina. Investors raise in some cases the problem of Argentine regulations in relation to the outflow of foreign currency from the country. On the other hand, there is also interest in what the country can sell. The idea is to set up a marketing office for products from the ten provinces of the Great North in Dubai, in the UAE. We come with national officials with the intention of having meetings with lithium mining and extraction companies. It is a shared interest that we have with the governor of Catamarca, Raúl Jalil (Frente de Todos).
