- Was there a massive launching of presidential candidacies this week? Is your ad coming too?
- Talking about candidacies now is disrespecting society, it is increasing the divorce between people and politics.
Argentina is the country with the most presidential candidates per capita.
And society is on another channel, it does not ask for personal projects.
He is having a hard time, he is poor and he feels that there is no long-term bet.
- So, there is no climate to launch?
- I'm doing the same as always.
As an outsider who does not come to break everything, but comes from the disruption, to face the status quo.
Two years ago I entered the most discredited profession, which is politics, to lead many people, including myself, who were not represented by any space.
The problem is political, not just economic.
Argentina is politically blocked, if we continue with the antagonisms we will be blocked for four more years.
- It comes from a time of certain media silence. Is it necessary sometimes?
- One of the main errors that many who try to analyze my movements fall into is that they see me as a politician.
And I am, I take charge, but I am also a doctor, a scientist, and I think in that format.
I have no political strategy.
For this reason, after having been constantly campaigning in 2021, and in 2022 touring the 24 provinces and working as a deputy, in December I went on vacation with my son, like a normal guy, who goes to the beach as a family and not with four photographers accompanying me.
Now I am back on the field, starting with tours in the province of Buenos Aires trying to reach all those who do not find representation.
- Where in Together for Change do you feel? Does the PRO intern cover the rest of the coalition actors?
- Look, clearly I am not in the PRO or in their internship, which makes us revolve around the historical electorate of Together for Change, does not allow us to reach the popular sectors.
The PRO intern's novel takes us radicals off axis, we have to get out of there.
The majority of Argentines do not feel represented by the extremes, by privileges of politicians that must be changed in substance.
Someone has to do it, it may not be me, but it is necessary to end that.
Facundo Manes, national deputy for the UCR. Photo: Juan Manuel Foglia.
- Does the PRO seek to make you invisible?
- When I started in this I decided to go to the end, collaborating from my place so that Argentina leaves behind the decadence, the lack of perspective of a sad society.
I am not interested in political operations or personal attacks, I think that politicians are very good at doing operations;
I will never be;
If I transform into them they will beat me.
I humbly say, they are great at it.
- Do you agree with Javier Milei on the idea of political caste
?
- More than caste, for me, it is a corporation.
Politics has left the best values it had, which sought to create a community, and has dedicated itself to operations and gadgets.
It has become an end in itself, the idea of "I do politics for the next election."
You no longer think about the function of the political servant, of militancy, of dedication, of being honest.
- Do you agree with those within Juntos por el Cambio who propose to compete in the elections with crossed formulas?
- I do not have any position in the UCR nor in the table of Together for the Change.
I have the support of the people who voted for me in 2021 and I still feel it on the street.
But the strategy will be defined in Together for Change.
- Is it impossible for me to compete outside of Together for Change? There is talk of his affinity with Juan Schiaretti, the governor of Córdoba.
- There is no other option than from within radicalism.
This is not done by uniting leaders.
We must speak to the voter of Peronism, to the disappointed, to the one who was disenchanted with Cambiemos, to the one who never voted for him, to the radical sympathizer who has lost hope that radicalism will lead.
What is coming will not be resolved at a table of leaders.
- But you do believe that the coalition needs to be expanded...
- Yes, I want to expand it, but what I want above all is a balance.
That some of the PRO, who have no self-criticism, can sit down and talk on an equal footing with the radicals, with the Peronists or with the independents.
A European-style coalition, in which different spaces come together to gain power and transform the country.
We don't have that today.
- Is there no self-criticism in the PRO?
- (Silence) What a good question... I think that one of the problems that we all have in Argentina is the lack of self-criticism.
Failure as a country is part of everyone, we have to take charge that we have been regressing for years.
Facundo Manes, national deputy for the UCR.
Photo: Juan Manuel Foglia.
- You are, along with Gerardo Morales, one of those listed in the presidential race for the UCR. Do you rule out being a candidate for governor of the province of Buenos Aires?
- Yeah,
I discard it, because I believe that as an outsider of civil society that I am, without commitments or fears, I have to help millions of Argentines to face the future.
That exceeds the province of Buenos Aires, I want to think of a country.
- Some of your critics say that you question the PRO, which is a partner in the coalition, more than Kirchnerism. Is it so?
- The government of Alberto Fernández is a disaster, Kirchnerism was a disaster and it is an exhausted model, it represents the worst and it is a failure, with examples such as Santa Cruz, where they manage the Justice and there is little private activity linked to the State.
I don't know what more criticism they want me to do to Kirchnerism.
I am interested in the disappointed vote K, because I want to transform Argentina, not just win an election.
One of the big problems with Together for Change today is that many think we won.
I do not see victory as certain if we do not expand.
We have to reinvent ourselves.
- What is your opinion of Sergio Massa's first semester as Minister of Economy?
- There is no economic plan, I see his management as a permanent patch, with the irresponsibility that means that they are trying to pass the bomb to the next government, and the irresponsibility also of some of us, who want everything to explode now.
- Who do you imagine as president on December 10?
- On December 10 I imagine a president or president who is not yet on the radar of the red circle.
Polls couldn't predict anything since the pandemic.
And I take the lack of experience as a value, not as a negative point.
Many who had experience as civil servants sank the country.
We need more people with a vocation to lead, who do not come from a corrupt system or privileges.
The big dreamers are sometimes the most realistic.
