José Luis Espert & Cía: the great liberal cuckoo disarmed and the doubt is where those votes will go

Eduardo Paladini

06/14/2021 11:56 PM

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 06/14/2021 11:56 PM

Certainly fed up with the crack, but also with politics in general,

the liberals had become the big bogeyman for this election

. After a regular debut in the 2019 presidential election, the disruptive speech of

José Luis Espert & Cía

seemed that now it could capitalize on the demands of an audience tired of traditional leaders. Mostly young people, opponents, who did not feel represented by Together for Change. And that mixture of libertarian, right-wing, republican, came to measure more than 10 points in national polls. But the mega alliance

 never materialized and the question now is where those votes will go

.

What happened? The film that generated suspense and even a bit of terror in Together for Change was transformed into drama, with a police edge. When about 20 parties and stamps were heading to form a large force and had even already chosen a name, the complaint that Espert had supposedly received a narco contribution to his campaign generated a shock and

the unborn "Frente Vamos" went nowhere

.

"That was the break

,

"

agree two leaders who participated in the assembly.

"Also the abrupt departure of (José) Romero Feris, who provided his party as a structure," adds a third.

Espert emphatically denies that complaint and even today complains about the explanations asked by some partners

.

After an initial silence, in the first days of May he decided to give public explanations.

He summed it up like this:

The leaders of Republicanos Unidos, led by Ricardo López Murphy, came together in one front for this election.

They were negotiating with Espert, but then there was no agreement.

"At the beginning of 2019, in one of the many business meetings in which I participate as a consultant, I met Mr. Federico Machado

(arrested this year for alleged drug trafficking)

, he told me that he was an admirer of my ideas," Espert started.

And he added: "I was just presenting my second book and the publisher did not have the city of Viedma within its journeys in the book presentation. He proposed that I present my book in Viedma, I thought it was fantastic and he organized it.

That was my whole relationship with Machado

. "

In addition, he assured that all contributions to the Unite force, for which it was presented in 2019,

were in court without objections

.

"At that time (between mid and late April) the front closed or exploded. And

with this it ended up exploding,

" adds a source to

Clarín

.

And he speculates: "If Kirchnerism was helping him in any way to harm Juntos por el Cambio, with this he cut himself off."

The dispersion of the figures

With the bomb detonated, the main figures in space began to search for new directions.

Several weeks ago, Espert, almost as critical of Kirchnerism as of Macrismo, began negotiating to join the Juntos por el Cambio intern in the province of Buenos Aires.

"If we want to defeat Kirchnerism forever in 2023,

that begins in 2021 in the Province

. It is the epicenter of Kirchnerism and economic disaster. Also, if Kicillof sounds like a candidate for president, we must stop him now," the economist told this newspaper, a benchmark for

Avanza Libertad

.

And he proposed: "

Let's all go to a great STEP and let the people decide who is the best opponent of the governor

. This would be a great opposition STEP, where Peronists can also enter, Stolbizer. It is not the intern of Together for Change and that is why we ask that the name be changed. We bring the economic wisdom that Together for Change did not have. "

Cynthia Hotton and José Romero Feris (in the center of the photo) signed an agreement to go to this election together.

It is an

open and complex negotiation, in which other actors play such as the PRO

-with the larretismo proposing Diego Santilli and with Jorge Macri resisting the Buenos Aires outpost-, the UCR -which decided to play the figure of Facundo Manes and shook the board- and the Civic Coalition - with the unpredictable Elisa Carrió, who came down two days after joining the Buenos Aires bid.

"There is an advanced idea that the floor in the STEP to enter the list is the equivalent of what is needed from the outside to get a seat.

In Province it would be about three points of the total of the list. With that, you guarantee that the one that I wanted to go outside, like Espert, get inside

, add your votes and have the same chances of having a bench, "an important UCR leader explained to this newspaper. That same negotiation will be extended to floors for other positions, such as provincial legislators or councilors.

A similar scheme is discussed in Ciudad and there an agreement is close to being closed with

Ricardo López Murphy

, another of the figures of the great liberal front that was not.

As this newspaper advanced, the former minister launched his candidacy for national deputy for CABA and has already joined Patricia Bullrich, one of his possible rivals in the Juntos por el Cambio intern.

"In the City

the boss is Larreta and it is expected that he will give the OK so that Ricardo can play in the intern,

" added a source close to López Murphy.

In this case, the floor to enter the list would be closer to the 6 or 7 points that are needed to win a seat for a national deputy in the City.

Former Economy Minister Roque Fernández is tempted to run for Senator in Córdoba.

With the landslide of López Murphy,

Javier Milei's nomination for libertarians was cleared

.

With the failed record of 2019, Espert counts him as an ally to fight with the list of Avanza Libertad en la Ciudad.

Other liberals want to add Milei to their own space. 

"Everything is on the way for Milei to be a candidate in the City with the Autonomist Party, Values ​​for my Country and other forces that

we reconfigure ourselves at the national level

," crosses a leader of that parallel armed group.

Roque Fernandez

The look of a pollster

Clarín

consulted

Lucas Romero

, director of the

Synopsis

pollster

, to see how he analyzed the "libertarian phenomenon" and what could happen to those votes, now that the idea of ​​a great right-wing alliance seems discarded.

He answered like this:

- "Two aspects must be analyzed to understand the phenomenon. On the one hand, this confirms

how complicated it is for the most media figures to become political figures with electoral potential

. There is a whole bureaucratic and administrative process behind a candidacy that does not it's easy to cope. "

- "In the presidential, for example, Espert had to improvise a party, when the seal he had agreed left him alone. To compete, you need a legal party structure, which you have to put together and conditions you. It conditions alliances by For example.

Sometimes you end up an ally of unpresentable characters who walk with the game under their arms

, going back and forth offering it. "

- "

I also need a territorial anchorage

.

. Not just move television studios 

. So these three figures were Espert, Rosales and Milei then have to achieve it

in the case of Lopez Murphy, I think I tried to

find there a point landing but he didn't succeed either. "

- "

Secondly there is an identity issue

. The left tends to articulate with a more positive identity, people who identify with certain programmatic guidelines, ideology, proposals. And

the right has a more negative identity: what unites it is consensus to what they reject

. "

Synopsis poll: right-wing voters, motivated so that the Frente de Todos does not win.

- "I point this out because when you analyze the behavior of Espert's electorate or other expressions of the right, such as Hotton and the evangelicals,

that sum gives us about 10 points

. But when you ask that electorate what they don't want happens in the election,

the first thing they tell you is that they don't want the Frente de Todos to win, more than 90%

. "

- "And when you ask them if they are willing to change their vote to support the one in the best conditions to beat the Frente de Todos, there you find that

the vast majority tell you that they are very willing to do so

. Liberal armed forces are not in line with Juntos por el Cambio, competitive, it seems difficult for them to retain the votes between the PASO and the general election. "

- "This, I think, is what tempted Espert, for example, to want to join the Juntos por el Cambio intern; add there and not be relegated by the useful vote. Juntos por el Cambio's agreement with the Front of All to maintain the STEP, even with a month of postponement, it had that purpose: to

liquefy the third or fourth forces between the primaries and the general

. "

- "For this reason,

the Frente de Todos needs to win the PASO by more than 5 points to be guaranteed a victory in the general

classification. Now, the primary can reorder the anti-K vote. This happened in 2017, when Esteban Bullrich tied with Cristina la PASO in the Province and then wins her in the general. For the Government, clearly, it was better to go directly to a single vote in November, when you even had a better health situation guaranteed. "