There is an adjective that
Mauricio Macri
is in charge of repeating to each of the very few who come to sit at his small table: fair-minded.
He defines it, he says, from his early years as a businessman, but also in his stage as a leader, going through his time as president of Boca, in the eight years of Buenos Aires head of government or in the four that he was head of state.
"I am an
even-tempered guy, but never impartial
," he expands in the comment, when at this time he is asked what position he takes in the face of the recent
presidential launches of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, María Eugenia Vidal and Patricia Bullrich
, all from the PRO that he himself founded and of which he still feels his political boss.
The reflection allows us to glimpse some confirmations within the "Mauritius Universe", today divided between his multiple FIFA commitments, his family life, but with a strong presence in the daily politics of Together for Change.
There is one more, central scenario, that no one in the PRO is encouraged to cancel, although there is a general agreement among all the actors when they are consulted.
Will Macri be a candidate for president or not?
"Today, I think Mauricio has decided not to be a candidate, but I wish he was, because PASO wins it for sure and then he is the one who can best stop Milei," says a close friend of the former president of the Nation.
On Friday, at the meeting of the Libertad y Democracia Group that took place in Chile - where he had to participate via Zoom due to a problem with the British Airways airline that was transferring him from Madrid - Macri remained unknown.
"I'm going to collaborate where I can add more."
Returning from Europe due to his commitments as FIFA president, Macri will be this week with tours of Rosario, in Santa Fe (it will be this Monday), and Córdoba, two central provinces of the country, in which Together for Change has expectations of win.
In Rosario, he will focus on the drug issue.
Córdoba will have the seasoning of the election in La Falda where the Juntos candidate has a chance of winning.
But only in April, probably in the middle of the month, will the former president announce whether or not to play as a candidate for president.
The date will coincide with the first two gubernatorial elections, which will be held on April 16, in Neuquén and Río Negro.
Especially in the first case, Macri is playing an important role, because he supports the former MPN official, Rolando Figueroa, who broke with the party that has ruled the dominant provincial party for more than 60 years.
Figueroa appears second in a survey he carried out, with a voting intention of 17%, but more than 10 points below Marcos Koopmann, the ruling party candidate, who seems on track to win the election.
If "Rolo" hits a historic blow there, it can be a kick for Macri to encourage himself to compete and give space to his illusion of playing the second half.
Your preferred candidate and how to read the signs
The first certainty is that if it were up to him, in terms of personal desire,
the candidate he would support would be Vidal
.
He feels a predilection for the former governor of the province of Buenos Aires, he believes that she is at the right time in terms of management experience and that she is the one who best embodies the values of the PRO.
That is why
he surrounded her with who is perhaps the closest leader to Macri today.
Darío Nieto
, Buenos Aires legislator, but former executive secretary during his time as president and who continues to accompany him in each of the activities he carries out in the suburbs and in the interior of the country.
They say that when Vidal offered Nieto to join his 2023 project, he was convinced and assured her that he would go all the way with her, but he put a condition: if Macri decides to go for the "second half", he automatically joins again. your work team.
Vidal agreed and declared it publicly:
"If Mauricio competes, I'm not going to do it
. "
Mauricio Macri and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, together in La Angostura.
With Vidal, Macri could be partial, but that trait of equanimity that he wants to imprint on a possible PRO intern forces him to recognize that today, by far, he is the one with the least voting intention and presidential profile compared to Bullrich and Larreta.
This tandem, with an increasingly harsh relationship, is the one that puts him in front of another scenario in which he must also establish a position.
Those who are guided by gestures or photos can be wrong
, they say close to Macri.
It is not a small thing that he has turned over to the Bullrich team someone of his extreme confidence such as Hernán Lombardi, former Secretary of Media in his government, or that he has received the former Minister of Security for two full days at his residence in Cumelén, on a visit family that also included Bullrich's husband, Guillermo Yanco.
But it does not have to be read as determinative.
Macri
sees Bullrich experiencing dizzying growth
that he perceives not only in the polls, but also in the treatment he receives from the red circle and in the ability he has shown to articulate teams around her within the dynamic of Together for Change, strengthening strong ties with a sector of radicalism, as he showed in Mendoza, or also with the more liberal wing, of Ricardo López Murphy, who confirmed that he will be a candidate for head of government and will support her in her presidential adventure.
Mauricio Macri received Patricia Bullrich in Villa La Angostura and they talked about the PASO in Together for Change.
In the case of Rodríguez Larreta, he feels that he began to go through a middle stage after ups and downs in his image that he can hardly repeat.
However, even with differences in the forms, he is with the mayor of Buenos Aires with whom he has the best chances of negotiating candidacies, throughout the country, but above all in the City and in the Province.
If there is something that remains latent in Macri, it is
his distrust of radicalism
.
He knows that he needs him as a partner in the coalition, but if it were up to him, he would repeat the 100% yellow model of PRO officials with which he managed almost all of his government.
He thinks so if one day he returns to govern the Nation, but it is even more applicable to the internal Buenos Aires.
An agreement that they would have reached with Larreta is that
yes or yes the candidate that they will prop up in the City will be a pure PRO
, ruling out Martín Lousteau, national political partner of the current mayor.
From that list, Macri has a natural favourite, which is his cousin, Jorge Macri, although he also values Soledad Acuña's hawkish profile and welcomes Emmanuel Ferrario's takeoff.
If they agree on the figure of
Jorge Macri
, by decantation it is expected that they will close a support for Diego Santilli as a pre-candidate for governor for the province of Buenos Aires.
But for now, the candidate who most seduces the former president is Néstor Grindetti, mayor of Lanús, whom he will seek to position as much as he can, although he is aware that in the measurements Santilli has a sustained advantage over the rest today.
Cristian Ritondo is another who runs that race, also with the endorsement of Macri and especially María Eugenia Vidal.
