The opposition of Together for Change entered in the last hours in an agreement frenzy that once again tests the armed capacity of its leaders.
The pre-election vertigo forces the call this Monday to a summit of the caciques of Together for Change, to leave the state of secret deliberation that confronts two styles.
On the one hand, the agreement of the Larreta-Carrió-Morales wing that understands that politics must build consensus and representation. On the other, the Macri wing, of which Patricia Bullrich is representative on earth. It claims politics as a territory of intransigence and regenerationism.
Some seek to test the elasticity of the coalition to broaden the coalition. The others understand the task as the exercise of a leadership that seeks to drag the electorate by cutting differences, pointing out adversaries.
Seeking to polarize, he ponders temperamental elements such as conviction against the lukewarmness of those whose hand trembles, necessary to fulfill an agenda that Macri's government did not dare to advance between 2015-2019.
The point of contention is now whether to admit any council with the project of Juan Schiaretti and non-Christian Peronism, and how to formalize the entry of José Luis Espert as a presidential candidate.
The mere fact that Monday's summit is held or failed will indicate whether that opposition force, which on paper has already won the elections, is in a position to turn the promise of the polls into a reality at the ballot box.
The agreement to the small table
Since Wednesday, the first level of the JxC leadership went underground to resolve issues that should be tied up in just over a week.
The UCR has a national convention on June 12, within two Mondays, and on the 14th, two days later, the parties must write down the alliances. There are many issues and many interests that are transited in uncertainty and that must have an end, whatever it is, in record time.
The main question that JxC has to resolve is whether it admits to enter into an understanding with sectors of non-Christian Peronism, with Juan Schiaretti at the head. If that idea succeeds, it will have to resolve whether there is an effective expansion of the coalition, or if it will close any compromise for after the PASO.
In the first of the alternatives, the Cambiemos table should enable the entry of Juan Schiaretti, Florencio Randazzo, Juan Manuel Urtubey, Diego Bossio and others to compete in the primaries of August 13.
This instance will not succeed. Schiaretti imagines other formats. The second question is whether to allow Espert to enter the coalition as a pre-candidate for president. Bullrich would want him, instead, as a candidate for something in Buenos Aires. This expansion has the support of Larreta, Morales, Carrió, Gustavo Valdés, Abad, Facundo Manes.
Macri's veto power is limited: how is he going to oppose an understanding with his friend Schiaretti if he was the one who brought him to Pichetto first.
"I'm not going to call Macri"
The framework of this rapprochement was described by Schiaretti to a group of bankers who received him on Thursday at the Association of Banks of Argentina, where he attended with Diego Bossio and Deputy Carlos Gutierrez. He explained that he participates in the idea of the front of fronts to bury Christianity, but that the coalition has to be closed before the electoral process, not after. That puts pressure on the times between now and June 14.
He pointed out the need to summon the best in politics as in 2001 when the departure from the country was possible due to a shared task between Peronism and radicalism. Asked if Macri shares the idea and he replied: "I'm old enough to be employed by anyone. I'm not going to call Macri."
It was the recognition of a certain distance, but it is public that if there is someone whom Macri does not want in Córdoba it is Luis Juez, candidate for governor. On dollarization, Schiaretti said it is a miracle solution. At this point he recalled that he had worked with Domingo Cavallo but that now he does not demand convertibility or dollarization.
Scare theory as an electoral factor
The hardest bone of this attempt to expand the coalition are Macri and Bullrich. Macri resists any step of independence that Larreta undertakes, and even less if it involves questioning Bullrich's candidacy. She says she has polls that point to Patricia ahead of Larreta in several districts and that she will win the PASO of Cambiemos.
He gave details of that perception on Tuesday at a lunch he had with a score of businessmen in the dining room of the Censys company, in the Altercity industrial complex of Tucumán.
According to Macri, the best result will be achieved by Javier Milei in the PASO, (not necessarily winning) because the public will support him to unload pending quarrels with the government, the opposition and other institutions. This result will provoke a political run like the one he suffered when he lost the PASO of August 2019.
But in the first round, the public, frightened, will react rationally to the possibility of a deepening of the crisis, and will support Cambiemos, that is, Bullrich. This presumption rests on the prejudice that the public changes its vote, when it is demonstrable that adhesions to political families do not usually change: Peronism 30/32, non-Peronism 40/42, rain or shine, with Gardel or Frankenstein as candidates. We have been ruled by Gardel and also by Frankenstein. For something it will be.
The outcome depends on the distribution of representation from the rest of the electorate. Whoever divides loses. It does not seem that neither Together for Change nor the Frente de Todos are going to be divided in this electoral round.
Larreta opened his home to Morales and Schiaretti
The initiative to expand the coalition evokes the debate that took place in 2018/9 between Cambiemos and the Córdoba table that included Schiaretti, Urtubey, Sergio Massa, Roberto Lavagna and Miguel Pichetto.
That relationship was overshadowed by Massa's migration to Christianity, the cast dispersed and only Pichetto had the audacity to be the candidate for vice president of Cambiemos with Macri at the head.
This time the rapprochement is made through the Cambiemos no macrista, despite the fact that Schiaretti has a close relationship with Macri. Schiaretti met stealthily on Wednesday with Horacio Rodriguez Larreta and Gerardo Morales at the home of the head of the Buenos Aires government. They discussed the terms of the approach without coming up with any definitive format. "We talked about everyone and everything," the three acknowledged when leaving that meeting that in a few hours came to the knowledge of other leaders.
On Friday Macri was the subject of debate with Patricia Bullrich and others around him, on whose attitude depends the success of the summit promoted by Morales for this Monday.
Córdoba has to pay the agreement
The meeting of the three seems the cornerstone of an agreement that would put the opposition on a competitive level to the point of speculating on a victory in the first round of elections.
Schiaretti governs the second province in number of votes and shares the electorate that expresses both non-Christian Peronism and Macrismo. In that district, Schiaretti already added PRO leaders such as Javier Pretto, who will be a candidate for vice mayor of the capital of the province in the lists of schiarettismo.
There is no small thing to be resolved in Córdoba, such as the relationship of the local ruling party with Luis Juez, and, more importantly, the role of Mario Negri, head of the radical bloc in Deputies and leader of the opposition in the chamber.
The reproach to Schiaretti is that he comes in search of an agreement after imposing an electoral timetable in his province that responds to his convenience. If you want a deal, it has a price.
For example, make a single list of candidates for national deputies headed by Negri and with positions that can be entered by the radicals with weight in that province.
Another is to hand over the election of mayor of the Capital to Rodrigo de Loredo. Morales was with Negri on Thursday morning at a breakfast in the capital in which he related the conversation with Schiaretti and Larreta. He traveled to Corrientes where he spoke with Gustavo Valdés, the radical with the best relations with Macri, but who doubts about turning his support to Patricia Bullrich. In the meeting he had with Larreta he showed him the results of a survey in his province that puts Horacio 8 points above Patricia.
Larreta and Santilli owe Carrió some bill
On the night of the same Thursday, Larreta and Diego Santilli were constituted in the grill El Mirasol of the Tortugas Mall complex, restaurant of Pilar, halfway between Capilla del Señor and the Capital, to talk with Elisa Carrió. The head of the Coalition has a bill to collect for the understanding with which she agreed to lower her support for Fernán Quirós so that Jorge Macri is the unity candidate of Cambiemos in CABA.
From that meeting – which was attended by the president of the Coalition Maxi Ferraro and Larreta's campaign manager, Fernando Di Benedetto – came issues to include in Monday's meeting of the Cambiemos table.
One of them is to force that in all districts there are unity lists of deputies and senators, which can be hung from the candidates for president in the PASO and, in Buenos Aires and CABA, who vote on the same date as the national ones, from the candidates for governor.
This is a point of controversy, because Larreta accepted the candidacy of cousin Jorge in exchange for not socializing Santilli's ticket in Buenos Aires with sectors that support Patricia Bullrich. That resistance is one of the pledges to negotiate the unity that all those who participate in this round of conciliation of positions intonate.
The idea of unified ballots is supported by Ernesto Sanz - vindicating the method he imposed in 2015 to seal the agreement for the creation of Cambiemos - Larreta, Morales, Carrió, Manes and Abad. This leader is one of the most rushed by the times, because already on Saturday the UCR of Buenos Aires had to comply with the process of the convention.
The radical swarm
That same Thursday, Morales met with Abad, head of the UCR in Buenos Aires, with differences. The jujeño showed himself with 75 candidates for mayors of Buenos Aires who drove Abad's land crazy. He also complains that Patricia Bullrich plays it as her own, when he has not defined anything and maintains the need for the UCR to have its own presidential candidate.
Morales met in his offices on Belgrano Avenue with about 40 radical leaders and legislators to whom he explained the scope, even gaseous, of the rapprochement with Schiaretti.
He discussed this possibility with the group made up of Gustavo Posse – Abad's internal adversary -, Julio Martínez, Ricardo Buryaile, Mario Fiad, José Cano, Silvia Giacoppo.
He finished the day with Posse, Mauricio D'Alessandro, Juan Pedro Tunessi, Walter Carusso and other leaders in the town of Navarro. In a long after-dinner he slipped other details about this expansion of the coalition.
Pichetto, on tour in Pehuajó, was already aware of this strip of meetings. He has discussed this possibility of expanding the coalition with Randazzo, with whom he rebuilt relations. He also met with Bossio, Schiaretti's campaign manager, who at the same time dialogues with Manes through the economist Martín Rapetti This professional is a partner of Bossio in the consulting firm Equilibra and in turn is the main advisor in that economic matter of the neurologist.
AQ
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