Friday, January 2, 2015

'If vultures show no will to agree, CFK could end term without deal'

Juan Manuel Abal Medina is pictured while addressing Congress as cabinet chief of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner''s second term in office.

With the RUFO clause – preventing Argentina from voluntarily offering holdout creditors better terms than those of its 2005 and 2010 restructurings -, no longer in force, senator Juan Manuel Abal Medina warned the long-standing legal battle against so called “vulture funds” will not be settled if hedge funds do not prove their “will” to close an agreement.

“There will be no kind of agreement that is no convenient for the country,” the ex cabinet chief told media this morning.

“We will not be extorted. Agreements can be reached as long as vultures don’t hold a maximalist position,” Abal Media affirmed considering President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner could even end her term in office without reaching a deal with hedge funds.

“If there is no will for an agreement on their behalf, we could get to the end of the term without reaching an agreement.”

Parlasur spat

Queried about Ms. Kirchner’s political future once she ends her second term in office in December this year, Abal Medina dismissed chances the head of state would run for a seat in the Parlasur, Mercosur’s legislative body.

“For someone who was president and leads a political project, that is kind of a small post. I do not imagine the President going there,” the senator – who has recently replaced Aníbal Fernández after he was appointed secretary general to the presidency earlier in December – said.

Cristina Kirchner, Abal Medina insisted, “will surely continue to be the political leader” of the ruling Victory Front and considered she needs no "formal post" to run the party.

“(CFK) has no fear, it is enough to see the decisions she makes, the definitions she takes in each of the matters,” Juan Manuel Abal Medina said also responding to criticism by opposition MPs who have accused Ms. Kirchner of seeking a Parlasur seat to have legal “immunity” once she leaves the government.