Last Tuesday, invited to the gala for the 40th anniversary of Conciencia, Ramiro Marra walked through La Rural as if he were another protagonist of the red circle.
It seemed, that day, that many followers of the business and political lobby no longer looked at him from the side as in other times, something like a pro-market outsider who came to break with caste at the hands of Javier Milei.
Milei, her disciple Marra, and
the entire libertarian army may still be considered by many insiders as a group of freaks with ideas that are impossible to put into practice
.
But for the outside the look changed.
Any survey that is done places the Libertarian candidate in around 20 points nationally and competitively in almost all the provincial adventures that he undertakes.
Cristina Kirchner
knows this and implicitly recognized it in her act last Thursday.
She criticized Milei for bringing ideas that "failed" more than 20 years ago, such as convertibility and dollarization, and called him "a fool" and "cheeky."
This battery of grievances served for
the hard Kirchnerism, the one who is going to vote, to place the economist as a direct rival
who, some predict, can leave the Frente de Todos up to third in the election and reach a runoff with Juntos por el Change.
The 'mission impossible' of negotiating with Milei
It is precisely in the main opposition coalition that there are still doubts about how to react to Milei's growth, which almost no one talks about as a phenomenon anymore, but rather as a reality.
In the meeting that they held on Tuesday in San Isidro, in the house of Jorge Triaca, the main referents of the PRO focused the debate on the incorporation of the other coveted libertarian, José Luis Espert.
"We are not talking about Milei," said
Cristian Ritondo
as he left the summit.
He was not even needed, because the concern that the irruption of the economist generates is so great that he is no longer mentioned when designing the strategies devised to stop him.
Adding Espert as the hard alternative of PASO in the Province points to that, and also to unite forces to wrest the governorship from Axel Kicillof in an election without a ballotage.
Bullrich, Santilli, Angelini, Larreta, Macri, De Andreis, Ritondo and Vidal, together in the photo at Triaca's house,
Also at the end of the PRO meeting,
Diego Santilli
said in an interview with Radio Miter that "we are going to get together with Milei, we are going to chat with him, to create a space to talk."
The idea arises from the most dialogue wing of the party, the same one that led to the arrival of Espert and is represented by Santilli and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
It is, curiously,
the sector of the PRO with which Milei would never sit down to have a coffee
.
"His dialogue is with the hawk line, with Macri and with Bullrich; he will never be in an agreement that includes the 'doves' of the PRO," they say in the environment of the Libertad Avanza deputy, rejecting any negotiation with Larretismo, the Radical Civic Union and the Civic Coalition.
The idea of weaving an alliance with Milei in the province of Buenos Aires in the general elections, to "turn them into a ballotage", has been promoted for months by Martín Tetaz, another who is committed to being a candidate for Buenos Aires governor for radicalism.
Unless the hard wing of the PRO breaks and joins his own project, for Milei it is unfeasible.
Bullrich's distrust of Espert
In parallel, the debate on
the role of Espert in the next STEP
arises .
Everyone already discounts that the economist, long distanced from his former co-religionist Milei, is going to join Together for Change.
The UCR approved it, the Civic Coalition as well, and
the only thing missing is the formal hook of the PRO
, which is expected to be confirmed this week, after a meeting between party representatives and the current deputy.
Larretism has been seducing Espert for almost two years, when the very good performance he had in the Province, playing separately, struck
7.5% and totaling almost 700,000 votes
.
"These are votes that we have to have in 2023," the PRO leaders who fueled his incorporation have been excited ever since.
Patricia Bullrich and Javier Milei, in a 2022 image, together.
But within the PRO there is
someone who mistrusts Espert
, and Larreta's intentions to add him.
It is
Patricia Bullrich
, who suspects that the Larreta-Espert partnership is not part of a Buenos Aires strategy but of a national plan that props up the economist as a libertarian presidential candidate within Together for Change that weakens his own candidacy.
The former president of the PRO, who has just handed over that position to the Macrista Federico Angelini, does not say so, but
doubts who and how the Espert campaign will be financed
.
For libertarian friends, Macri and Bullrich already have Milei, with whom they have talked periodically in the last two years and with whom they maintain a relationship of mutual respect.
At the end of March, when Alberto Fernández compared Milei with Adolf Hitler, the former Security Minister had
a gesture with the economist
that, grateful, she does not forget.
"She took out a tweet repudiating the sayings and sent it to Javier via Whatsapp," they say in mileism about the last exchange.