Cristina and Fernando Lugo launch anti-neoliberal front for Latin America
Cristina Kirchner presented her book Sinceramente in Posadas. In addition to meeting with the leaders of local Peronism, she also met with former President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo, with whom she agreed on the need to promote a regional wave that confronts neoliberalism, an issue that after the overwhelming victory on the primaries, the former President began to mention in her speeches with increasing intensity.
The former President held a rally at the Ernesto "Finito" Ghermann sports center in the city of Posadas. The stadium can host 3500 people, but in anticipation of a wider audience, the organizers installed giant screens in the surrounding areas. More than 15,000 people were left outside, according to the organizers. "Without mobilization," the Peronists clarified.
Cristina met with Lugo, who led his country between 2008 and 2012, before the rally. The Paraguayan was ousted from office after a questionable process. His downfall was perhaps the beginning of the decline of the wave of center and leftists governments that were leading the Latin America region at the time.
Cristina had already met Lugo in Buenos Aires in May of last year through the former Argentine ambassador to the Vatican, Eduardo Valdés, who is also a link to other regional leaders, such as Ecuador's Rafael Correa. Since that meeting in Buenos Aires, a contact group with Lugo was set up.
One of the participants in the Buenos Aires meeting was Alberto Grillón, senator of the Guasú Front, Lugo's party. It was Grillón who learned of Cristina Misiones' visit and contacted Valdés to coordinate Saturday's meeting.
"Paraguayan leaders follow with great interest the Argentine elections as an influence to the popular processes in Latin America and see it as a turning point in front of the series of victories accumulated by the neoliberal right in the continent," sources familiar to the conversations said.
According to a source, during the meeting, the former Presidents spoke about Paraguayan politics - where Mario Abdo of the Partido Colorado governs today - and about the results of the primaries in Argentina. Abdo has a good relationship with Macri, but the Colorado Party has also been a historical ally of Peronism. Therefore, as LPO revealed, it is not ruled out that if Alberto Fernandez ends up being elected president, the project of the Corpus dam will be reactivated.
Perhaps in what appears to be a deliberate distribution of roles, Cristina approaches populist or left-wing leaders and Alberto Fernández approaches leaders from the center-left to the center. This became clear during her recent visit to Madrid, where she chose to meet with the top leaders of the Spanish PSOE and avoided showing up at bilateral meetings with the Podemos leadership, very close to Cristina and La Campora. He only showed himself to some of them in an open meeting in the Spanish Congress, in which he did not hesitate to challenge them for their confrontation with socialist Pedro Sánchez.
At the highest point of their meeting in Paraná, Cristina and Lugo talked about the situation of progressivism in Latin America and agreed on the need to recover the political spaces lost in the region. Lula's release is in that sense a cornerstone of this strategy and perhaps the most visible coincidence between Cristina and Alberto in international politics.
As she usually does during her tours, the former President met with local leaders, such as Governor Hugo Passalacqua and Senator Maurice Closs.
The two, like Lugo, were on the front row during the presentation along with governor-elect Oscar Herrera, congresswoman Cristina Britez and Ricardo and Joaquín Losada, mayor of Posadas. The former Secretary General of the Presidency, Oscar Parrilli, also participated. And Lugo himself, sitting in the front row.
The Renewal Front led by radical Carlos Rovira is already allied with Cristina and aims to move Cambiemos to third place and share with Kirchnerism the four congressional seats that are at play.
After the presentation of the book, Cristina greeted the crowd that was waiting for her outside the convention center and even though she was more than a thousand miles away from Buenos Aires, she danced to the new hit tune against Macri "Si vos querés".