Pedro's 'Wado' and the elections: 'Due to the pandemic, we think it is good that the PASO are made in September'

Ignacio Ortelli

04/06/2021 15:24

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 04/06/2021 3:24 PM

Before landing in Deputies to try

a first rapprochement with the opposition blocs,

the Minister of the Interior,

Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro

, established the position of the Casa Rosada regarding the holding of the primary elections and stated that, for the pandemic and the reappearance of infections, the Government thinks it is "good" that

"the STEP be made in September",

but reiterated that any change must be made "with political consensus."

Thus, De Pedro drew up the message that this Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. he will take to the legislators, before the invitation he received from the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa, in the middle of the debate regarding the holding of the primaries for the advancement of the coronavirus infections.

"Because of the pandemic, it seems good to us that the STEP be done in September," said the minister, before

Clarín

and other media, at Casa Rosada, recalling that on August 8, when the elections are due to be held according to the calendar, there will be passing through "one of the months where respiratory diseases are most affected".

At the same time, in that line, De Pedro explained that the idea is also to

run the date of the general elections

to guarantee that there are

"at least 60 days" between both elections,

as recommended by the National Electoral Chamber, so it would be necessary to run them to November.

In several passages, De Pedro emphasized that the Government "is concerned about the health of Argentines, not (the result of) the PASO" and recalled that it was the government of Néstor Kirchner that gave birth to the primaries.

With this premise, the Executive will initially propose to work on a project that two deputies from Together for Change, Carla Carrizo and Emiliano Yacobitti, presented last year, which contemplates that the PASO will be carried out -this year and also going forward- on the second Sunday of September.

The curious thing is that this initiative arose in the opposition as a response to the first movements that, last December, the governors made to try to advance with the suspension of the PASO.

For this reason, the Carrizo and Yacobitti project prohibits in its text the possibility of their being eliminated.

It also proposes to limit the term between the primaries and the general ones, to avoid situations of fragility like the one that occurred in 2019, when the overwhelming victory of the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Kirchner formula left the government of Mauricio Macri in a weak situation.

"In Congress the conditions are in place to generate consensus,"

said De Pedro, who remarked that "the proposal of the President and the Government is that any change has to take place with political consensus."

The minister recalled that, in addition to this initiative, there is the project of the FdT deputy Pablo Yedlin, sponsored by the governors, who proposes to suspend the STEP.

And that there are legislators who promote as an intermediate way out the possibility of unifying the primaries with the general ones.

One of them was Massa himself who this Sunday acknowledged on Del Plata radio that "he would prefer to vote in a single day" and that an "agreement be reached by the political forces that avoids the carrying out of the STEP, or that the same day "as the general ones.

However, a priori in the Government they prefer to advance with the postponement of one month of the primaries.

On the other hand, De Pedro relativized the impact of the controversy that arose last week, after at the end of a meeting at Casa Rosada in which he participated together with Massa and the head of the Frente de Todos bloc, Máximo Kirchner, and to which the opponents Cristian Ritondo and Jorge Macri were invited, it was said that an agreement had been reached to suspend the PASO, which unleashed a storm in the opposition.

"If the noise is the product of debate or discussion, it seems fine to me, if the noise is speculation, no," reasoned the official who in the last hours analyzed the scenario via telephone with the President, who remains isolated after giving positive for coronavirus.

In that sense, he crossed the opponents who sought to frame the proposal as a spurious attempt by the ruling party.

"To start talking about fraud is to underestimate people," he questioned.