Alberto Fernández rearms his international agenda due to defeat and would not go to the United States

In the package of revisions that the presidency makes after the strong defeat of the Frente de Todos in the primary elections last Sunday, is the agenda of the trips abroad that Alberto Fernández was going to face this weekend.

I had at least four international departures planned by December. The first victim would be his trip to New York for his first physical appearance before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday 21. This afternoon, Alberto Fernández has marked turn to deliver his speech, in person, in front of the whole body.

Some officials have argued that he should travel given his ongoing allusions to multilateralism, his ties to climate change advocates and because it is one of the main international forums in which Argentina claim for Malvinas. But the presidential advisers They suggested that Fernández return to virtual mode, as it did last year, in the context where the whole of the United Nations functioned that way. This year there is an option to go or do it remotely.

Your advisers advise you instead to yes you must travel to Mexico, where the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which will take place on Saturday Argentina seeks to preside.

The president had planned to travel to Mexico City this Friday, and from there to travel directly to the United States, where on Tuesday he was excited by a photo with Joe Biden. The government also believed that this trip would be like an intimate party, after a victory at PASO. But that did not happen.

Alberto Fernández must not only focus now on presenting the next federal budget, but he must also plan how to win the two million votes needed to reverse defeat against the adversary Together for change. Or at least reduce the difference.

This Tuesday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Solá, and his chief of staff, Guillermo Justo Cháves, were confirmed for the trip to Mexico. And the presence of the President is to be confirmed. They had not even sent the presidential advance necessary for these trips to the United States.

Meanwhile, Ambassador to Washington and Argentine Sherpa to the G20, Jorge Argüello, will be in Italy this Wednesday and Thursday to work on the final draft of the declaration by the summit presidents of this group of powers and emerging countries. which will take place at the end of October, in Rome. Alberto F. is due to attend, which on November 1-2 is also scheduled for the Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

“Everything is to be confirmed”, They point out to the government now after the earthquake on Sunday.

In the equation the advisers make to cancel the Manhattan trip is the fact that Biden himself will be there for a few hours. His speech is the same Monday morning. The presence of Chinese Xi Jinping and Russian Vladimir Putin is also not confirmed in New York.

On the other hand, Alberto F. was invited by Biden to participate in virtual mode in High-level dialogue meeting on climate action in the Americas for this Friday 17. It is a Forum of Large Economies on Energy and Climate. The two leaders will be there live, but in line.

The weight of the trip to Mexico is different, they admit. Especially after Fernández and Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s insistence that Argentina assume the presidency of CELAC from January 2022. It would be a regional victory.

This Latin American and Caribbean forum without the participation of the United States and Canada, and created by the late Hugo Chávez, has more symbolic than real weight. But López Obrador, Fernández and Luis Arce, from Bolivia, want to resignify it to counterbalance the Organization of American States (OAS), without being the radicalized left of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Last week, the Director of Central America of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gustavo Martínez Pandiani, visited several Caribbean islands looking for the vote of small states that could complicate the Argentine election, which would in principle be insured. Nicaragua had complicated it by the poor relations of the Ortega regime with the Argentine government and had presented Saint Vincent and the Grenadines as its candidate.

Solá, who received Nicolás Maduro’s commercial director, Stela Lugo, in his office last Friday, Venezuela’s support would have been guaranteed and it also has that of Cuba. Thus, the pact would be for Nicaragua to withdraw from the negotiations so as not to hamper the consensus for Argentina to chair CELAC in 2022, replacing Mexico which, exceptionally, had it for two years.

In this context, a lack of Alberto Fernandez at the top of Mexico would be very badly received in the neighborhood.