alone in the early morning
He got up early for the first message in the morning, although he had been up late from the wedding in Areco: "You are going to find out about news that you are not going to want to hear, but I promise you that we will continue working together. I hope you understand me, "he
said
. He said, words more, words less, to
Miguel Pichetto
.
His running mate in 2019, a friend who understands him like few others, replied "I understand the decision, I have always thought that you were the undisputed leader and that you should be the candidate. But I understand you
.
"
That scoop, forced by personal relationships - something that is sometimes hard to believe that moves political behavior -
was also given to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta on Friday
.
Mauricio Macri advanced the decision to him
, although he did not tell him when he would announce it.
There were requests for discretion, which made the interlocutor at breakfast at the Tennis Club believe that it would be sooner rather than later.
From that meeting, Macri went to record, on Friday afternoon, the message that he posted yesterday morning on the networks.
The text, those around him swear, is 100% from his pen, none of the pen advisers he has intervened.
By the way, if those courts could talk, the Tennis Club was the headquarters of Frepaso conspiracies for years.
Graciela Fernández Meijide and another tennis player, Chacho Álvarez, played and conspired there.
Why did the confession take place there?
Larreta is not a partner, Mauricio is and he put the place of the appointment.
Mistrust, another weakness
"How is he going to be a candidate if he can't win? He doesn't win a ballot. In addition, he has dynamited his leadership, from the moment when Horacio and Patricia told him that they were not getting off for any reason."
Elisa Carrió told me this a month ago
.
Pure realism, hidden by the mist of the ambitions that are unleashed in any campaign.
Now there are plenty of those who presume that they already knew that Mauricio would not be a candidate.
They repeated what he said, but no one believed him.
The
distrust of his statements
is one of the sides of his
weakness as a candidate
, as it happens to other leaders.
Carrió says this Sunday that he does not lower his candidacy.
He will remain silent for Lent, which he respects like every year.
He will only break them this week with a trip to Córdoba.
He will participate in a meeting of constitutionalists and they are waiting for him, with their respective roasts, Mario Negri and also Luis Juez.
a bath of realism
Macri had just come from a meeting on Tuesday at Pichetto's studio on Paraná street,
with Ernesto Sanz and Ramón Puerta
: the most important political appointment Macri had in several months.
He resisted the calls of the table to be a candidate.
He responded with ice: you cannot govern alone, decisions must be made with the consensus of others.
I don't think the public is convinced of the changes that need to be made.
The businessmen are not convinced to accompany either.
It happened at the same time as the jubilee of banks and companies with the Government's measures.
Those who listened know that between 2015 and 2017
the one who wanted to be alone was Macri
, who took advantage of an electoral coalition, but did not create a coalition government.
It was time for the Ballotage Party, which made him win.
Now
he understands that this was not enough
.
That you have to build something that may be late or impossible with him at the helm.
Now the problem is with the government.
Resigning Cristina took leverage from the most anti-K opposition
.
Macri's departure subtracts the same resource from the ruling party.
Macri's decision speeds up the definitions in the opposition, but it poses a greater commitment to the ruling party.
Kirchnero-Christianity has leveraged its strategies in the confrontation with Mauricio (who is Macri, remember?) since 2005.
Speculations falter without him,
all mounted on the call for resistance against a "conservative restoration"
.
This is how he called the enemy of 2015 that group of AI (artificial intelligence) called Open Letter-he had not found out that the mails already existed...-.
They lost that year, and the result can be repeated if Peronism does not look for another way to build competitiveness.
The management of the economy is tumultuous and discredits it precisely in the public of the large districts, where the vote for Cambiemos has been the winner in the last decade.
The mistake of governing for those who do not vote for you is already endemic in Peronism
.
The chain of errors in economic management, which neither works nor has prestige, begins to work in reality.
Alberto Fernández, who, like the boys, repeats what he hears, has already said that Macri's departure favors the moderate candidates -he, Scioli, Schiaretti...-.
But
the strategic coup complicates everything
.
The government falters
Larreta had
another key meeting
during the week
, before meeting Macri on Friday.
He was last Tuesday night
with Jaime Durán Barba
, who is being discussed, but whose perceptions tend to be correct.
Speculation arises from these conversations that economic management may precipitate a collapse of Peronism in the elections.
If this occurs,
uncertainty can grow around three scenarios
:
1)
That Cambiemos, with any of its candidates, win in the first round
.
If you look at the numbers for 2021, if you add three points to the 42 in the legislature, you can reach 45 without a double round.
Whoever the candidate is is trivial, none can make him lose votes in the public of PvC.
2)
That there is a growth
, that nobody perceives today,
of a Peronism different from that of the AMBA
, that takes advantage of the 30 historical points, which it has with any candidate.
It is the role that the Peronist governors of the interior could fulfill, who have money, prestige and territorial control.
But they have doubled the date and have ignored, until now, the follies of the forum -Olivos, the Instituto Patria-.
An urgently recomposed Peronism among what remains of Christianity after Massa's shipwreck, with Schiaretti's pulmotor, could put him in the race.
One wonders why it would happen right now, at the worst moment of that force.
3) A third less probable scenario, but one that these speculations do not rule out, is that Javier Milei's candidacy
accumulates remnants of the public's rejection of the Cambiemos candidates and disputes positions with him
.
One might also wonder why it would happen today, when Milei's force took out just two deputies in 2021.
A look with a magnifying glass at the numbers he produced in his district serves as proof of his ability to pick up the wounded.
In the PASS to national deputy he obtained that year 13.90% (242,839 votes).
Overall, he increased just 3.25% (he reached 17.04%, 313,808 votes).
That harvest was not enough for him to add one more deputy.
Self-absorption and inbreeding
In politics, as in football, you don't unlearn.
The syndrome of loneliness was described by Jesús Rodríguez as the self-absorption of Macri ("La razón y la pasión", the best self-criticism of the Cambiemos government, March 15, 2020).
Carrió had previously criticized the "inbreeding" of the PRO.
Macri cannot complain about a loneliness that he manufactured.
But he has learned.
The decision not to be a candidate is a mature fruit of that learning.
Sanz insisted that he should be a candidate
and that his party, the UCR, did not yet have competitive candidates.
Why don't they say it in public? Mauricio must have said, looking at the ceiling.
Sanz had already fulfilled the mission of pushing him to repeat the Ballot Party methodology in 2015: unity lists for national legislators in all districts, and free stone to support presidential formulas.
Sanz also questions the magic of the PASO, a tool that Peronism created against its opponents but which made them lose the elections in 2015.
That story that whoever loses internally will help you in the general is a unprovable fiction
.
A tough business to get out
Sanz will not say anything, but understands that Macri's decision is politically debatable, but personally very understandable.
He himself made a similar decision in 2015
when he resigned from being a government official that he helped build together with Macri and Carrió.
Those who believe they understand the character's genius believe that Macri had already closed, personally, the possibility of becoming president again.
He was slow to make the transition from that personal perception to the political decision.
Néstor said that politics is a business that is very easy to enter, but very difficult to get out of.
Macri played with the desire of others, with the decision already made.
He sought not to harm the interest of the group with his withdrawal.
He announces it when he is already doing damage: his (in) decision has dispersed the PRO in various windows, and he also projects a crisis towards Together for Change.
The lack of clear leadership in his party permeated the whole.
But the dimension of that damage is repaired with the dimension of the exit gesture.
It was difficult for his coalition partners to go along with him if he insisted on a losing bid
.
He himself is not a politician and, for that reason, he sees no profit in competing to lose.
He would only play if he clearly won.
If he let time pass, the damage would be greater.
He did not achieve what Morales in the UCR
He is far from the radicals;
He doesn't speak to Gerardo Morales, and he has dedicated himself to cultivating courtesies with everything radical that is not from Morales.
The man from Jujuy achieved in his match what he could not in the PRO.
He got rid of the internal competition that Martín Lousteau and Facundo Manes represented.
He could not get rid of Larreta or Patricia
, who are more of him than Lousteau and Manes de Morales.
With Carrió he maintains a dispute that mixes reproaches, mistrust and personal fascination
.
The head of the Coalition already told him last year: "I am not going to be another card in your bridge plays."
Fine farewell for a goodbye ceremony that never ends.
He never stops loving what he loved.
It goes down, but it doesn't go away
Coldness is the other face of the character.
She danced until dawn this Sunday at the Vidal-Sacco wedding party at the Areco ranch, with a relish that had not been seen since the World Cup celebration in Qatar.
From this celebration we must add another perception, noticed only by experts in the
face recognition
of Creole politics: the joy with which he triscó in
rounds and little trains with Horacio and María Eugenia
, recreating fraternal revelry that nobody would imagine with Patricia or Pichetto, to mention other partners of hard macrismo.
At that time, she had already written the farewell, recorded the video and had released her braids.
But at the same party he confirmed to Alex Campbell that this Tuesday at his offices in Olivos he is waiting for the leadership of the PRO from the province of Buenos Aires and a selection of provincial mayors and legislators.
He gets off, but doesn't retire
.
Felipe and Aznar, two models
In his message he criticizes the caudillismo and the puppet governments.
He will have to take care not to incur the same evil that he criticizes.
He has on the horizon the model of José María Aznar, who promised not to be a candidate again and secured the patronage of two terms for the Popular Party in Spain.
The method has another antecedent in Felipe González
.
Upon leaving the government of Spain, he promised, and fulfilled, that never again in his life would he assume any institutional commitment.
That is why he remains a living legend of his party.
The first task in Macri's plain will be to read "Un tal González"
(by José Miguel Castillo, Alfaguara, 2022), the historical novel about Felipe that Pichetto recommended, which is a walking library.
On Monday night -at the Fundación Libertad dinner- he will be cheered by friends like the Argentine Aznar.
Another Mauricio is born, which is Macri.
look too
Why Mauricio Macri announced now that he will not be a candidate and the other news that can shake the PRO
The fearsome off the record in the Government and the days of Sergio Massa's anger
