Argentine politics is abuzz.
There are five months left for the primaries where the names of those who will seek the presidency in October will come out.
The candidates of the two main coalitions, the Frente de Todos -Peronist, today in the Government- and Together for Change -of the center right-, have the best chances of victory.
But choosing a name has become a nightmare.
On the Casa Rosada side, the fight between the president, Alberto Fernández, and his vice president, Cristina Kirchner, blocks any possibility of a political agreement.
In the opposition, former President Mauricio Macri delays the definition of his eventual candidacy and fuels internal differences.
For now, no weighty figures have emerged that can break the game of politics.
Last Wednesday, Fernández inaugurated the Legislative year with harsh attacks on the Supreme Court, which he accuses of playing with its rulings for the opposition, but without defining whether he will seek re-election.
Kirchnerism, which at this point has taken away any support for him, does not want him as a candidate and demands that he step aside.
Fernández has decided to stand up, warning that he will only get off if they present him with a better candidate.
With Cristina Kirchner self-excluded from the race since last December, when she was sentenced in a corruption case to six years in prison and disqualified, the vacuum in Peronism is evident.
There is no leader who exceeds five points in the polls, a drought that puts the Government before the abyss of defeat.
On the horizon, then, appears the name of the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, at the head of the third leg of the Frente de Todos coalition.
Massa accepted the hot potato of the Argentine economy because he was sure of its success.
And because he achieved the support of Kirchnerism, which clung to his figure for being the last card against the economic crisis.
The minister's mission is to prevent everything from exploding before the elections so that Peronism has a remote chance of victory.
But things have not been easy for Massa.
In January, inflation climbed to 6% and year-on-year is already close to three digits.
With each rise in the CPI, the electoral aspirations of the Frente de Todos recede a little further and the figure of Massa loses weight.
This week, however, the minister will recover some of the lost ground.
On Monday he will announce, if everything goes according to plan, an agreement to postpone until 2025 maturities of debt bonds for some 16 trillion pesos.
And on Wednesday he expects the International Monetary Fund to approve the revision of the refinancing agreement closed in January of last year for 45,000 million dollars.
Massa trusts that these two pieces of news will give oxygen to the Argentine economy and, at the same time, save his presidential project.
Everything will depend on what Cristina Kirchner does, the leader with the most votes in Peronism, with a floor of 25%.
On March 11, the leaders accompanying her will hold a plenary session against the judicial "proscription" of which Kirchner feels she is a victim.
It will actually be a meeting in which they will try to convince her to be a candidate, either for president or for senator.
Fernández is the target to destroy.
Andrés Larroque, a leader very close to Cristina Kirchner, warned on Saturday that "the conditions are not right" for a re-election adventure for the president.
“The moderate variant is out of stock,” he said.
Kirchnerism does not forgive Fernández for not doing enough to solve the judicial problems of the head of the movement.
The sentence last December ended up breaking the relationship.
When the president and Kirchner met on Wednesday in Congress, they had not seen each other face to face for eight months.
That's how bad things are.
The opposition is not doing better.
Only the head of government of the city of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, launched his candidacy for Together for Change in the presidential elections.
He is facing the sectors most to the right of the coalition, which respond to Mauricio Macri.
The former president plays the puppeteer, rousing his troops to the fight while he keeps the definition of his own candidacy to himself.
His electoral bet is not Rodríguez Larreta but Patricia Bullrich, his former Minister of Security, a defender of a strong hand against crime from extreme positions.
The leaders of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) also join the fight, which already has a governor in the running, Gerardo Morales.
Elisa Carrió, an eternal candidate, is also on the list of candidates.
All of them are not willing to get out of the battle if Macri decides to be a candidate, much to the ex-president's regret.
The opposition feels like a winner and lives the primary elections in August as an early presidential election.
Argentines, meanwhile, are spectators of the miseries of politics.
The week that passed was rich in examples.
The 14 shots fired at a supermarket owned by Lionel Messi's in-laws in Rosario sparked the most fiery speeches against insecurity and led the candidates in a procession to the most violent city in the country.
The troubles generated even funny situations.
On Thursday night, journalist Esteban Trebucq, from the
América 24 news channel
, was walking the streets of Rosario wearing a bulletproof vest when he ran into Diego Santilli, Rodríguez Larreta's man for governor of the province of Buenos Aires.
“Diego Santilli came here.
What are you doing Diego, how is he doing?
I swear, all coincidence," said the journalist, looking at the camera.
"This is inadmissible, I came to accompany [the mayor of Rosario]," the politician replied.
Argentina is already in electoral mode.
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