Federico Mayol
04/07/2021 20:27
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/07/2021 20:27
In political terms, the isolation of Alberto Fernández was a relief for Horacio Rodríguez Larreta: the head of the Buenos Aires government did not like to share a staging with the President again.
The invitation, before Fernández himself announced through social networks that he had tested positive for COVID, had been paid by the Secretary General of the Presidency,
Julio Vitobello
, who telephoned
Diego Santilli
, his old friend from Buenos Aires Peronism, concerned about the vertiginous increase of cases of the second wave that arrived until the very heart of the quita de Olivos.
The meeting, in the end, took place on Saturday, virtually.
And it lasted for less than half an hour.
The President and Rodríguez Larreta did not speak again
, despite the fact that on Sunday there were strong versions of a new communication, denied by both administrations.
Afterwards
, it was a constant tug
of war: late on Tuesday, Vitobello and Santilli were on the phone again.
As in the times of the strict quarantine last year, although now traversed by mutual distrust and internal tensions in each space, fueled by the electoral calendar.
"
To think that six months ago we even had an office in Olivos,
" reasoned this Wednesday at the Buenos Aires headquarters on Uspallata street a couple of hours before the recorded message of the head of state was broadcast with the scope of the decree, which will govern in the AMBA and in the most critical areas starting at 0 this Friday.
The reasoning of Rodríguez Larreta's most intimate environment is literal: the head of government and his collaborators
had an office in the Olivos headquarters
-where the President works-, where they finalized details before each staging shared with Fernández and the governor Axel Kicillof with the quarantine announcements.
A sign of other times.
The link between the President and the head of government was
never the same again
.
The withdrawal of co-participation funds, the wear and tear of the pandemic and the pulls within the ruling party and Juntos por el Cambio ended up limiting a relationship that it tried, unsuccessfully, to
contain at the ends of each space.
Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri actively collaborated.
This Wednesday afternoon, before the announcements, in the Uspallata offices there was still
concern about the content of the presidential message.
The last conversations between Vitobello and Santilli ended up being
contaminated by the pulls around the closing hours of night activities
and the implementation of the traffic restriction from midnight - a euphemism for the "curfew" - finally decreed by the Government. .
The two meetings at Casa Rosada, on Monday and Tuesday, between the Chiefs of Staff and the Ministers of Health of the Nation, City and Province had not been satisfactory, despite the fact that the attendees never lost their kindness.
Tuesday's was decisive:
Santiago Cafiero and Carlos Bianco
blanked out that they wanted to restrict circulation between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Fernán Quirós and Felipe Miguel
answered that they did not agree, and that they would make it known.
It was what they did, despite requests to lower the media foam.
The Salomonic result of 23 o'clock for gastronomy leaves all the protagonists agreeable.
Rodríguez Larreta will take the official position starting at 8.30 this Thursday.
In the previous one, there were governors who also expressed their discontent.
Some of them, such as Córdoba and Santa Fe, with political advisers in common with the head of government.
The relationship with Axel Kicillof
Unlike the link with the President, the head of government does continue with much more fluid WhatsApp conversations with Kicillof: they spoke on Wednesday and Friday of last week, and did so again this Tuesday, in the run-up to the meeting at Casa Rosada .
They share the health concern.
In the City, however, they know that the Buenos Aires governor is much more urgent due to the exponential increase in coronavirus cases.
To begin with, due to the decentralization of the province's hospital system,
which can cause municipalities to collapse.
In the case of Fernández and Rodríguez Larreta, the second wave once again puts a wounded relationship to the test.
In the middle of last year,
the President introduced him in an official ceremony as his "friend
.
"
On Saturday, after the virtual chat, he mentioned him as "the head of the Government of CABA."
In the announcement on Wednesday, he even asked not to politicize the measures, hours after the statement from the leadership of Together for Change with the rejection of the measures and
endorsed by the head of government himself
.