Santiago Fioriti
04/10/2021 11:01 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/10/2021 11:01 PM
Axel Kicillof wanted to activate the red button.
He wanted and wants.
Alberto Fernández knows it and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta knows it.
The two, for now, resist.
Not with the same conviction.
The President would have been tougher if the economic climate had not been so adverse and if the very extensive previous quarantine, which his own specialists now take charge of, had not generated so much wear in popular humor.
The mayor would have been much less restrictive because he thinks that the health system would not collapse even if the most pessimistic curve of contagions that Fernán Quirós projected him in private was fulfilled.
Fernández and Larreta agree, also with nuances, that society would not tolerate a new confinement.
Every now and then panic assails them.
Both followed closely the incidents that occurred in Rome, with the police clashing with protesters who protested against the closure of shops.
They agree that the climate in the Argentine streets is altered.
Negotiations are already underway with the tough picketers so that they do not go out to protest in the next three weeks.
It is
a merciful request
after the cuts on Thursday in downtown Buenos Aires and in the Panamericana.
On Monday, at the Ministry of Social Development, Emilio Persico will receive the Polo Obrero and the rest of the groups not aligned with the Government.
His referents anticipate that "it is not to sign any truce."
Everything happens while Alberto and Horacio go through the most sensitive moment in their relationship since the pandemic broke out.
They speak only what is necessary.
The dialogue is cold.
Larreta never told him, but considers him a traitor.
Now he let her know that he was unwilling to grant Kicillof's wish.
And his chief of staff, Felipe Miguel, warned his peers that Together for Change would fight in the media.
The first president went into a state of alert.
For his advisers, the head of government entered
campaign mode
, pulled by the extremist voices of his force.
In the City they return kindnesses: they blame Fernández for being Cristina's hostage.
The truth is that it was the first time that Larreta asked him something like this since March 20 of last year, when the social, preventive and compulsory isolation began.
Times in which they appeared almost as if they were members of the same political group.
The Fernández-Larreta-Kicillof block then led the head of state to very high peaks of recognition.
Now he seeks to recreate that climate in the face of the collapse of his image.
Nothing is as it was.
Above, there were no photos and he had to settle for interacting by chat because he was studying Covid-19.
Anchored in Olivos, Alberto intervened so that the Province and the City would sit down to negotiate and promote similar restrictions on one side and the other of General Paz.
Kicillof disagrees with both.
He says it and sends it to say
.
With Fernández, because he considers that the projection of cases will be exponential and he reasons that this - sooner or later - will equally affect the economy;
Either because extreme measures will have to be applied in the future or because the citizens themselves, fearful of having nowhere to attend to, will remain confined in their homes.
With Larreta there is no possible agreement: he believes that the Head of Government underestimates the jump in infections and maintains that, if the Province were to run out of beds, the phenomenon would drag the City because the patients would be referred.
They say it dramatically next to him:
"We are going to compete for the beds
.
"
That proposal flew over the permanent dialogue of the two administrations.
"We have to close everything again for two or three weeks,
" was the first proposal that the Buenos Aires Chief of Staff, Carlos Bianco, and the Deputy Minister of Health, Nicolás Kreplak, made in talks with the leadership of the Buenos Aires government.
Rodríguez Larreta officials were shocked
.
They had come up with a much more moderate package of initiatives.
They intended, at best, to adjust the control in the bars and prohibit the gatherings at the doors, but with a much more generous time limit.
The Chamber of Gastronomists had pressed them.
There were also dialogues with Luis Barrionuevo.
The union member reminded them that the pandemic devastated 2,000 bars and restaurants in 2020 and warned that a new measure against it would leave a bleak outlook.
More: someone
suggested that many, even if they were reached by a decree, could open prepo.
"If we run out of the night shift we die," said the restaurant owners.
Together for Change, alerted to what was happening in Casa Rosada, released a statement to pressure Kirchnerism and make it clear to society that they were not going to support severe restrictions.
La Cámpora answered immediately: he spoke of "wicked minds."
Under that climate they argued
.
Larreta ordered his officials to operate in the shadows and in the media against a total shutdown.
The end of the film was not what he expected, although it is true that it could have been worse for his aspirations.
"This ends badly." We are going to have an insurrection in the streets. We cannot close. People don't give more,
”Buenos Aires deputy chief Diego Santilli told Julio Vitobello, the secretary general of the Presidency, in a conversation on Tuesday night.
The bridges, at that time, were cut.
"Let me discuss it with the President now
to see what we can do,
" Vitobello replied.
The official was isolated because he was a close contact with the head of state.
Alberto remained in the guest room of the Olivos residence "like a bad maniac," as he said again this week when contacted by WhatsApp.
He would go out for a walk to talk on the phone.
He was under constant pressure from the governor.
Of the governor and Cristina.
The vice president monitors the Conurbano on a daily basis.
His electoral future is tied to him
.
Kicillof sends him a daily report with the state of the hospitals, with the number of available beds that future patients expect and with the projection of vaccinated.
Cristina could begin to press for the Executive
to launch a new aid plan for those who cannot work
, perhaps anticipating a greater closure in the coming weeks.
Martín Guzmán does not win to disappointment.
The crossroads is transferred to the municipalities, especially those of Greater Buenos Aires.
There is no mayor who does not assume that he is worried about social discontent, about a cocktail that combines discouragement due to the growth of poverty, the shortage of vaccines and the new restrictions.
It reveals them to know to what extent they will be effective in epidemiological terms but, before that, if they will be respected by their neighbors.
While asking those questions, in the meetings with Kicillof they only hear that
worse times are coming.
The second wave and the confirmation of the new variants (the English one and the one that originated in Manaus) are shaken on a daily basis by the president's collaborators.
The mayors recognize that infections are multiplying.
They, too, are prisoners of a very long quarantine in 2020.
They would like to close again but they cannot or do not dare to say so
.
The vast majority already have more daily cases than during last year's peak.
Some examples.
In Lanús, the peak of the first wave occurred on August 24, with 254 infections;
last Thursday it climbed to 528. In Hurlingham, on August 7 there were 99 positives;
now there is an average of 120;
in Tigre, on April 9 there were 279;
on Friday the figure reached 318;
in Quilmes they went from 431 cases to 466. In Vicente López they jumped from 124 on September 3 to 196 last Wednesday.
The Conurbano has more tests than then, it is true, but Nicolás Kreplak usually says that the positivity grows anyway and that this is just beginning.
In urban centers there is also concern about increases.
La Plata has worrying figures: the 2020 peak occurred on August 27, with 372 cases;
this Tuesday there were 847.
To close or not to close, that is the question.
Kicillof goes for everything.
Larreta trusts and resists.
Alberto balances and fears.
The rope is tightened for all and is exhibited increasingly narrow.