When he returned from his trip to Europe, where he fulfilled commitments for his role as executive president of the FIFA Foundation, Mauricio Macri had already made the decision to drop his candidacy.
He told his family and a tiny group of his closest advisers.
And he maintained silence from last Monday until this Sunday in which he surprised with the
announcement on social networks
, which he had recorded between Thursday and Friday, right in the middle of the two meetings he had with María Eugenia Vidal and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. .
Neither Vidal nor Larreta, nor Bullrich, were aware of the former president's decision
.
Although they could intuit it, they expected it for April or May.
To such an extent did Macri preserve the secret that he did not even release it during the wedding of the former Buenos Aires governor and the journalist Enrique Sacco, on Saturday night, in San Antonio de Areco.
Hours before announcing that he was dropping his candidacy,
the former president was at the El Rosario del Areco ranch, with his wife Juliana Awada
.
They were one of the few political guests who attended the wedding: Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Milagros Maylin, Federico Salvai, Carolina Stanley, Darío Nieto, Cristian Ritondo, Emmanuel Ferrario and Hernán Lacunza, the others.
Only Nieto, Macri's private secretary, was aware of the decision that his boss was going to communicate.
As Clarín
learned
, Macri arrived in Areco shortly after 5:30 p.m., the time the guests were summoned, and left around 12 at night.
In that period
he danced with the newlywed, also with his wife, and above all he chatted in a pleasant way with the select group of politicians present
.
He didn't give a single hint of what was going to happen on Sunday morning.
Since there were no fixed tables, the conversations took place in living rooms, like islands.
In that kind of reserved PRO, everyone updated the personal news
.
The most prominent was provided by Lacunza, the Minister of Economy in the final stretch of the Cambiemos administration, who presented his girlfriend in society.
Curiously, it was the lucky one who took the bouquet that Vidal threw.
María Eugenia Vidal married in San Antonio de Areco with the journalist Enrique Sacco.
The party, very austere and with
around 100 guests
, had a lot of panning: they served prawns, skewers, and for the main course there was braised tenderloin with potatoes.
Then came the traditional table of sweets and, although there were several batches of music, there was no specific show. He stood out dancing Ritondo, which he usually does not.
On the way out, he surprised
a traffic control
from the National Road Safety Agency, almost at the door of the stay, where he is not usually.
"He was a booby trap in case anyone had drunk alcohol," commented one of those present, slipping some attempt by the government to expose a PRO leader to a bad moment.
However, all those who underwent a breathalyzer test were fit to drive.
An expected decision, but not known
"I sensed it, Mauricio was always repeating that he was not going to get on."
The phrase corresponds to a very high source of the PRO, in constant dialogue with Mauricio Macri.
It has been shared by most of the party's actors for a long time.
The odds ratio of the former president running for a second term was hopefully 10%.
But, in fact, no one knew.
They all found out on Sunday morning, while having breakfast.
With Vidal and Larreta, Macri met last Wednesday and Friday.
With Bullrich he finally did not do it and it is not expected to do so either.
That, they say close to Macri, means nothing.
"Mauricio's relationship with Patricia is very good," they say.
María Eugenia Vidal, Enrique Sacco and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta with their girlfriend Milagros Maylin.
At Macri's small table they believe that
the announcement confirms that "Mauricio kicks the board again and shows that he is not a traditional politician
. "
They are convinced that the former president "won the election, but he feels that his role lies elsewhere."
His next steps will be to talk to the media, starting Monday morning, and then spend time with the family, key in the decision that Macri ended up making.
Returning from Europe after a long stay fulfilling commitments in his role as executive president of the FIFA Foundation, Macri had a very intense schedule of meetings this week.
After visiting Rosario on Monday, where he presented his book "For what", he began a series of meetings seeking to order the troops, but in which he did not reveal his candidacy.
Meetings and Signs Week
The two most relevant were the ones he had with
María Eugenia Vidal and Horacio Rodríguez Larret
, on Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
With the former governor of the province of Buenos Aires, she had breakfast at her house in Acassuso for an hour and a half, in which they reviewed surveys and the details of the strategy to be followed in Buenos Aires territory.
As has been written, if Macri had to subjectively choose who his candidate is for the next election, that would be Vidal.
"Mauricio loves María Eugenia very much, he believes that she always played as a team and he highly values having managed the province for four years," the sources closest to the former president agree.
That is why he enabled her to play as much as possible in the internal dispute with Larreta and Patricia Bullrich.
In the Aresco survey that Vidal approached Macri, she appears with a 7% vote intention, not so far from the 10.3% of the Buenos Aires head of government and the 14% of the former Security minister.
"Go ahead," Macri encouraged her.
The meeting with Larreta at the Tenis Club Argentino de Palermo on Friday was shorter, barely 55 minutes, but it seems to have been more decisive when it came to drawing political conclusions.
For now, there is no scheduled meeting between Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich.
The first is that Macri lowered the order to reduce the list of candidates for the succession of Rodríguez Larreta in Buenos Aires.
The person who quickly interpreted the message was Emmanuel Ferrario, the head of the Legislature, who that same afternoon published a message on social networks in which he announced his decision to step down as a candidate for head of government.
Macri's bet in the City is his cousin Jorge, Minister of Government and highly launched as a candidate
.
But above all, the former president wants to put a limit on Martín Lousteau, the candidate of radicalism, with whom Larreta has been working actively, and whom Macri distrusts.
Macri does not want to transfer, at least for now, to Larreta, more functions than that of the Buenos Aires army itself.
And neither in that cafe, nor at Vidal's wedding that they both shared on Saturday night, did he communicate that decision to her.
Larreta hoped that Macri would get off in April or May
.
look also
Mauricio Macri will not be a candidate: dialogues with businessmen and the secrets of that decision
For Alberto Fernández, the step aside of Macri strengthens the moderate candidates
