President Alberto Fernández on Wednesday fired ANSES chief Alejandro Vanoli for his error-prone management of the social security administration without immediately naming a successor.
The replacement for Vanoli emerged the following day – Buenos Aires Province Community Development Minister María Fernanda Raverta, a La Cámpora militant who was a Unidad Ciudadana national deputy until last December and an unsuccessful mayoral candidate in Mar del Plata last October.
The Casa Rosada briefed journalists Wednesday that Vanoli’s departure was part of a move to seek "a more dynamic management, closer to the needs of the people … in the framework of the general emergency caused due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
Raverta’s father is the high-profile ex-Montonero Mario Montoto, the treasurer of the urban guerrillas and a university classmate of late president Néstor Kirchner in his youth and today an extremely wealthy businessman (the Global View division of his Codesur company supplies the surveillance cameras for this metropolis) who cultivated the friendship of the conservative Pope Benedict XVI. The two have are not said to be close and Raverta adopted her mother’s surname. María Inés Raverta went missing in 1980 while in exile in Peru, disappeared as part of the Condor Plan.
Government House in La Plata later confirmed the news that La Campora leader Andres "Cuervo" Larroque, would be Raverta's replacement in the provincial administration.
Departure
Vanoli had managed to survive an administrative fiasco at ANSES (Administración Nacional de la Seguridad Social) at the start of last month.
On April 3, during the first fortnight of the coronavirus quarantine lockdown, he not only exposed thousands of pensioners to contagion by paying out retirement benefits through the banks in a single day, he compounded the risk by choosing that same date for the IFE (Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia) emergency family income payment.
The IFE was the occasion for further errors being laid at Vanoli’s door when many of the cheques for the emergency assistance payment were dated for June or July instead of April, while millions of people also complained (rightly or wrongly) about their exclusion from the mass benefit.
But the last straw was political rather than social – delays in naming the state directors to the boards of 50 private companies where ANSeS is a stakeholder, thus running the risk of leaving the nominees of previous president Mauricio Macri in place. These companies include such giants as Telecom and Techint.
Vanoli had been assumed to enjoy the protection of Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner by analysts. He was the last Central Bank governor of her 2007-2015 presidency but he had reportedly alienated the ex-head of state’s son, Máximo Kirchner, by failing to appoint a sufficient number of the La Cámpora militant youth grouping to top posts in ANSES.
If these grievances are as reported, they would presumably be satisfied by Raverta’s appointment. In any case, government sources assured local outlets, some other post would be found for Vanoli in due course.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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