Who’s Sergio Massa, the brand new “superminister” of the Economic system of Argentina

Massa is at the head of the Chamber of Deputies for the ruling Frente de Todos (center-left) party, whose trilogy of power he integrates together with President Alberto Fernández and Vice, Cristina Kirchner.

The newly appointed “super-minister” of the Economy of Argentina, Sergio Massa50, is a charismatic lawyer, former football manager and politician who has campaigned for both Peronism and anti-Peronism since the troubled 1980s.

Massa is at the head of the Chamber of Deputies by the ruling Frente de Todos (center-left) party, whose trilogy of power he integrates together with the president. Alberto Fernandez and the vice, Cristina Kirchner.

Like Fernández himself, Massa was chief of staff in the presidency of Cristina Kirchner, between 2008 and 2009, but then he became a fierce opponent, until he rejoined her to defeat former liberal president Mauricio Macri in the presidential elections of 2019

One of his proverbial phrases states: “The most serious victims of inflation are the workers, the unemployed and the retired”.

In the new position, which he will assume once he is replaced in Congress, Massa will be in charge of the areas of Economy, Productive Development and Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, and Relations with International, Bilateral and Multilateral Credit Bodies.

In his long political career, Massa was mayor of the city of Tigre, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. In 2013, he inflicted a hard symbolic defeat on the then president, Cristina Kirchner, by beating her in the province of Buenos Aires in the midterm legislative elections.

Kirchnerism attributed to him, then, links with anti-Peronist Catholic sectors, with the US embassy and with economic power. But as in politics everything changes, in 2019 he formed an alliance with Fernández and Cristina against Macri’s re-election. “When you use anything to stay in power and divide society, then you cannot govern,” he once warned.

Massa was director of the Tigre club, which led to the First Division of football. He is married to another high-ranking Peronist official and official, Malena Galmarini, with whom he has two children.

There are still Peronists who question him for having militated at the beginning of his career in the Sindicato de Centro Democrático, one of the largest anti-Peronist groups in history. But with the arrival in the Executive Power of the right-wing Peronist president Carlos Menem (1989-1999), he joined the governmental Justicialist Party (PJ).

In the second decade of the 21st century, to oppose the Kirchners, he founded the Frente Renovadora, a group that he still leads and for which he was a candidate for the presidency in 2015, when he came in third place (21.9% of the votes).

Massa is the son of a construction entrepreneur and a housewife, both Italian immigrants from Sicily.

Source: AFP