The president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, and his Brazilian couple, Jair Bolsonaro (right), at the 54th Summit of Mercosur Heads of State, July 12, 2019.
The president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, said that “Argentina chose badly” by consecrating President Alberto Fernández and said he will not congratulate him.
“Sorry. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think Argentina chose badly. The people put in power those who placed Argentina in a hole before,” Bolsonaro claimed Monday in statements during a layover on his Asia and Middle East tour in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Brazilian president has said he will wait to see what the position of the Peronist president is and what line he will adopt. “I do not intend to congratulate him. Now, we are not going to be indisposed,” he added.
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Fernández, who has become the next president of the South American country, with 48% of the votes, will lead the executive office of Argentina as of December 10 and for a period of four years.
Bolsonaro has also expressed his discontent over the part of the victory speech of the Argentine president-elect in which he sympathized with the detained ex-president and opposition leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
In addition, he warned Argentina that it can be “excluded from Mercosur ” in case Fernandez does not follow the line adopted so far by Macri. “If Argentina affects any of the clauses of the agreement (with the European Union) or not. If it affects them, we can exclude Argentina,” said Bolsonaro.
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The Argentines decided to change course, after accusing Macri of undermining the economy with conflicting measures, such as tariffs on basic services and transportation, mass layoffs and a general orientation towards cuts and loans received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Now, the new Argentine president will face enormous challenges, as shown by the alarming annual inflation rate of 53.5 percent and the forecast that, by the end of 2019, 4.5 million people in the southern country will be considered destitute. Even in September, Congress was forced to declare a food emergency until 2022.
The president-elect, whose vice president is former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has promised to get Argentina out of the crisis, as she and her late husband did after the disastrous neoliberal nightmare of former president De la Rua and his finance minister Domingo Cavallo.
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Featured image: File photo. The president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, and his Brazilian couple, Jair Bolsonaro (right), at the 54th Summit of Mercosur Heads of State, July 12, 2019.
Source URL: HispanTV with OT content
Translated and edited by JRE/EF
