Martín Bravo
06/07/2020 - 12:04
- Clarín.com
- Politics
Jaime Durán Barba goes through the quarantine in a 460-square-meter penthouse in Quito with an extraordinary view - as he describes it - towards the mountains of the eastern mountain range and on the other side to the city. With 72 years, hypertension and diabetes, he has not been out since March and has no contact with the two employees and a driver who assist him: "They are there but I don't even see them." Star adviser to Mauricio Macri from 2005 to the 2019 elections, he assures that he currently does not work for anyone in Argentina although he talks with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and María Eugenia Vidal with some frequency. "I speak with many people in Buenos Aires and with important personalities from different countries to know what is happening and to study how the pandemic impacts psychology and politics," he tells Clarín. in a phone interview.
- Since December do you talk more with Macri or Rodríguez Larreta?
-I have a lot of appreciation for Mauricio Macri, but I haven't had the opportunity to talk to him much. With Horacio I have talked more. I am very involved in the coronavirus and have tried to help in Guayaquil. Death is the worst thing that can happen to us in life. In States there were 110 thousand deaths, 183 times more than in Argentina. In Brazil 53 times more. The policy of those who were against isolation has been a catastrophe.
-He praised Alberto Fernández, Rodríguez Larreta and the governors in handling the pandemic, to what extent can the economic crisis and the extension of the quarantine in the AMBA complicate the current favorable scenario in terms of image and support for the measures?
-The crisis has to do with exhaustion. I can't take this anymore, I'd be shot right now. But the economy was not spared either in the United States or in Brazil. They are going to the economic hecatomb too. As long as we are afraid of dying, we are not going to act normally in the economy.
- Two months ago you said that Alberto Fernández jumped the crack, but in the last weeks the tension increased again, is it starting to open again?
-Democracy supposes that there is officialism and opposition. There is nothing worse than societies with a single truth. Dictatorship is the worst. But I think that both the Government and the opposition must overcome their fanaticism for the good of the country. What is not right is what happened when Macri was president and the opposition wanted to overthrow him.
-If with Macri's defeat a dispute for leadership in the PRO was unleashed, the pandemic gave even more centrality to Rodríguez Larreta, what projection does he make of his figure?
-Who knows how the country will look after the pandemic? This is an earthquake. Rodríguez Larreta is a figure that has been growing. The same Vidal, other leaders of the opposition and also of the Government. Those who put their personal ambition above the collective interest will lose the next elections. People have to be told about what takes away their sleep and what allows them to dream. At this time many are unable to sleep for fear of illness.
Macri was silent, but from the beginning he let out a position contrary to strict quarantine. A sector of Together for Change presses for the opening of activities. What is your reading?
-They have other points of view, but not attitudes like Bolsonaro or Trump that are dedicated to the electoral campaign. This idea of not protecting life and engaging in politics produces rejection. If you think differently, that's fine with me, but quarantine is widely supported by the population. I give data from a survey we did in Buenos Aires: about 80% are in favor. About 50% believe that they will not be infected, but are scared by the elderly. For their relatives. We old people are not disposable.
-In Together for Change there are two positions, one confrontational linked to partisan referents or without management positions, and another more conciliatory than those who govern. Is it a good strategy to cover a greater spectrum or an internal one that wears out?
-It is good that there are discrepancies. When Macri was president, he called the discussion for the legalization of abortion and there were people for and against it. Pluralism is good. It is in the discrepancy where knowledge grows.
- Rodríguez Larreta receives internal criticism from those who consider his approach to Alberto Fernández excessive. At what point would you advise differentiating yourself from the Government?
-Your views will not always be those of the government, not because it suits you or not, but because it is so. It would have been great if Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández talked in this crisis. That is civilization, democracy.
- Will Rodríguez Larreta have to distance himself from Macri or do they need each other?
-Macri got 41% of the votes, having had a huge economic disaster. That implies capital. Time will claim the Macri Government. Treason looks bad in politics and a country's economic situation does not depend on a president. If this were so in the Alberto Fernández government, there would be no capital flight, inflation and increased poverty. There are elements in this globalized society that are out of control.
- For what reasons will time claim the Macri government?
-I prefer to look at the future, but there were many positive things. The Internet was once equivalent to reading and writing. With Macri there were 6 million people who connected, it is a huge achievement. I hope that an effect of the dialogue between the Government and the opposition will be good sense and not create distorted images on one side and the other.
- How do you evaluate Macri's movements since December?
- I believe that it has been quite to the margin. When they demand that you dedicate yourself to talking, to talking about what? It seems good to me that someone who has been president does not bother. Macri does not have the psychopathy to oppose everything his opponents do and say.
Do you consider that you have a future in politics?
-You may have it, you may not have it. Who would have said four years ago that Cristina Fernández would return to power? Very few. In politics there are no definitive things and there are many ways of doing politics, not just being in the presidency, to have influence in society.
- Would you recommend being a candidate?
-Thinking about the future right now would be crazy. If I talk about it with him it will be in two or three years. Biden is going to win Trump's election, despite being a hugely boring candidate, and who would have thought it five months ago? It was decided that Trump would be reelected, he had reached the lowest unemployment figure in history and will have the highest in November.
-In Argentina, could the economic crisis give the opposition more leeway?
-According to how the government and the opposition are managed. If the Government goes back to the past and becomes more authoritarian and sectarian, it may be. If you maintain an open attitude, you probably won't.
-Can the pandemic favor authoritarian features in the government, as a sector of the opposition warns?
-It may happen in the short term, but the world we are going to in the West is a horizontal democracy. I don't think the question of superpowers is too important.
-How much does Cristina Kirchner influence Alberto Fernández's decisions and how do you think that relationship will continue?
-The president is Alberto Fernández and he has shown openness. I hope you know how to lead a democratic period. With more dialogue. The problem we Argentines have is fanaticism. Hopefully we learn to collaborate while maintaining the differences.
- In Juntos por el Cambio can there also be a surprise?
-No one would have said four years ago that Alberto Fernández was going to be president. What leadership did you have in Kirchnerism? He was completely rejected because he was fighting Cristina Fernández. Why can't something else come up? Why can't Marcos Galperin run for president? I would like Alejandro Borensztein, we would have a much happier Argentina.
-He said that Vidal grows with attacks on her and more for being a woman. For the moment, does silence benefit her?
-The confrontation normally affects who falls into that swamp. Vidal is not an official, she does not have to take a position on whether or not the insulation is shortened. It is good what it does.
-Emilio Monzó declared that after the pandemic it will be the time of statesmen and there will be no place for leaders as a result of marketing. Did you feel that it was partly addressed to you?
-I haven't followed Monzó. I suppose you may not have read my books, because I hate political marketing and left it sitting. Hence, to the time of old-fashioned leaders, wearing suits and ties, long and boring speeches, that will not work.
-His phrase had an impact: "Cristina is the most brilliant woman in Argentine history." How do you evaluate your image now?
- What I have said is that it is the most successful policy in Argentine history. He won the presidency twice in the first round with a wide margin. I admire Graciela Fernández Meijide, Alicia Moreau de Justo, Julieta Lanteri, but I can't help but recognize others who are intelligent, even if they don't think the same. I haven't followed his performance in the Senate much.
-Was it one of Macri's mistakes to polarize with her?
-We never polarize with it. I always said that I was a candidate with a lot of power. Her leadership has roots in Peronism, which is the oldest political phenomenon in Latin America since the Mexican PRI fell apart. Macri could not designate the Peronist candidate. I would have chosen Daniel Filmus, but it doesn't work that way.
-In the absence of results and each time the economic crisis deepened, the previous government resorted to inheritance and polarization. There was even concern when Cristina Kirchner did not speak for a time.
-That was never the position of the circle closest to Macri, he never bet on that and I much less. I don't think Macri has persecuted opponents. Between us the topic of conversation was never Cristina.
-He said that Macri's was a rare case, for getting 40% with such negative economic management. Did he really believe he could be reelected?
-Of course. You had to fight for it. In politics it is not possible to always win. We had won from 2005 to 2017 every election in which other candidates ran or sponsored. Even implausible, like Francisco de Narváez in 2009 against a superstar list, with Kirchner, Scioli and Massa.
-Did you evaluate advising Macri to desist from his candidacy when Cristina Kirchner anointed Alberto Fernández?
-Cristina ran without cumming. She stayed there. If he ran completely, Fernández lost. Macri could not be a binomial of Vidal. No one was anywhere near as strong as Macri could be. Vidal is an extraordinary woman, but to be successful she had to attack Macri and if she did, she was left without a vote. She is also an ethical woman, she would never have played traitor.
At that time, you considered that Alberto Fernández's candidacy was "clearly negative" for the possibilities of Peronism. What did you not see?
-I had no idea who he really was. In the campaign she contributed things that I did not know. He is a liberal person in many issues, such as the attitude towards his son, his modern partner, his guitar, his puppy Dylan who competed with our Balcarce. It produced a lot of sympathy.
PROFILE
Jaime Durán Barba was sympathetic to the Peronist left in the 70s. At that time he lived in Mendoza and Río Negro, had a partner in the Boedo neighborhood, and in Bariloche he met Manuel Mora and Araujo, a “definitive influence” on his profession: “ Until then, I did not believe in the polls, nor in democracy. " He arrived in the country when Héctor Cámpora won the elections and Alberto Martínez Baca, linked to the Tendencia, took over in Mendoza. "I was always a very left-wing guy, a rebellious aristocrat," he says wistfully of those years.
Since 2004 he returned to spend frequent stays in Argentina, in a department of Recoleta. That year he began to advise Mauricio Macri, who had been looking for a consultant after his defeat against Aníbal Ibarra. Durán Barba boasts of having collaborated for the PRO to win 14 elections until the fall of 2019: "Like every human being, sometimes I am wrong." He says that with Macri he had empathy at the outset for his sense of humor - "we joke and cry with laughter" -, and that he previously met Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and María Eugenia Vidal. He has more relationships with both now than with the former president.
He went from revered by Macrismo for his successful strategy in 2015, when he resisted an agreement with Sergio Massa, to reviled after the long distance in the primaries in favor of Alberto Fernández, whom he did not consider to be likely to win. In other countries, he advised Jamil Mahuad in Ecuador - during his government he held a position similar to that of chief of staff, between 1998 and 2000 -, Marina Silva in Brazil and Blanca Ovelar in Paraguay, among others. He denies having worked with Alternativa Liberal, Pablo Escobar's party in Colombia.
He was accused and investigated by the Justice for alleged dirty campaigns against Daniel Filmus -for falsely linking his father with Sergio Schoklender in a telephone recording, during the investigation for diversion of public funds from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Foundation-, Daniel Scioli and other rivals of their candidates. “I have never done that, not just for the ethical aspect. In all my books I say it is stupid, because it is useless ”, he seeks to detach himself. María Servini prosecuted her, with her partners Guillermo Garat and Rodrigo Lugones, for the violation of article 140 of the Electoral Code, of course deception to induce to vote in a certain way or refrain from doing so. Then the case went to the Buenos Aires Justice.
Controversial in his statements, his public words generated discomfort in Macri and members of the PRO at times. He relativizes some, such as when he told the magazine Noticias that "Hitler was a spectacular guy", although he admits that he likes to provoke. "Pope Francis does not move even 10 votes," he shot at the end of the 2015 campaign, which fueled the noise in the relationship with Jorge Bergoglio. When Federico Pinedo supported Gabriela Michetti in the intern against Rodríguez Larreta, Durán Barba dedicated to him that “he is very old and with Alzheimer's”, another expression that was repudiated. "I have always been an anti-Nazi and anti-totalitarian activist. I am a pacifist. I do not attack or insult. With Federico we are friends, it was to hump. All my life I have been very provocative, I say weird things for people to think about ”, he tries to justify.
ITINERARY
He studied Law and Philosophy in Ecuador and then went through the National University of Cuyo and the Sociology department of the Bariloche Foundation. In the 1970s he lived in Argentina and met Manuel Mora and Araujo, and in the following decade he became associated with the political consultant Joseph Napolitan in Washington. He dedicated to both of them The Art of Winning, one of the books he wrote with his partner Santiago Nieto. Prepare a reissue of "Women, sexuality, Internet and politics" and another on the history of Macrism. Between 1998 and 2000 he was Secretary General of the Public Administration of Ecuador, during the government of Jamil Mahuad. He is a professor at Washington University, during the quarantine he dictates a virtual postgraduate degree.
RIGHT NOW
- A project : Fight against intolerance.
- A challenge : Understand those who are different.
- A leader : Bertrand Russell.
- A hero : Francisco de Miranda, Bolívar's great teacher.
- A dream : Peace, that wars disappear.
- A memory : The signing of the peace treaty between Ecuador and Peru, in Brasilia.
- A society that you admire : Bhutan, built a primitive but wonderful utopia.
- A meal: Sweetbreads, well cooked.
- A drink : Mate. I drink a lot, bitter and strong.
- A pleasure : Music, there is nothing more wonderful.
-A book : The Little Man of the Geese, by Jakob Wassermann.
- A movie : Cabaret, with Liza Minnelli.
- A series : I have never seen one.