"Isn't it raining now? Miracle. God," Cristina Kirchner said within seconds of starting to speak in Plaza de Mayo, and put her hand to her chest to show the rosary to the crowd. Then he spoke several times of "him", but not to refer to God but to Néstor Kirchner, as he did during the year that lasted his mourning, when he wore black from head to toe.
20 years after her husband took office, the head of the Frente de Todos tried to motivate her parishioners with a predictable speech, only designed for self-celebration. He did not escape his last presentations. Same arguments, the same doubts about how to stand in the face of an impious crisis that hits the pockets, the usual enemies and the blows of effect that are repeated. Even the silences themselves, as if they were part of a play. In the Plaza there was emotion, but not euphoria. The rain hastened the exodus. Of those who arrived in buses financed from the Conurbano and of those who went spontaneously on foot and bought umbrellas at 3 thousand pesos each.
In part, Cristina fulfilled her modest objective of haranguing her own, because the fans cheered her, as they always do, although she did not want – or perhaps cannot – clear the main dilemma that confronts her, her government and her followers with the next stage. With less than a month to go before the closing of the lists, neither she nor they foresee an attractive presidential candidate who will assure them another four years in office.
In the Plaza, in front of a stage set up between the Pyramid and the monument to Manuel Belgrano, the militants asked their leader for an extra effort: "One more and let's not anymore," they chanted. "Cristina presidentaaa," they insisted. She, this time, said nothing. He has already denied three times that he will not be on the ballot. The vacuum of representation was exposed because none of the candidates that sounds ends up conforming to their followers. Cristina placed all of them very close: on the right Axel Kicillof, on her left Máximo Kirchner and, attached to her son, Eduardo de Pedro and Sergio Massa.
In her 57-minute speech, the vice president again appealed to the past, her favorite device to counteract those years with -supposedly- the misfortunes brought by the advent of Mauricio Macri and those that could come in Argentina from December if the course is changed again. That factor, that of the threat, will be recurrent in the campaign. Now he has brought back to the scene the corralito of 2001 and the figure of Domingo Cavallo, whom he did not mention by name but as a bald man with blue eyes. "It was the kukas who paid the deposits," he said. He railed against Macri, but also against Javier Milei and Martin Lousteau.
In his only allusion to the current administration, he said that everything would be "infinitely worse" if Macri had continued. Worse than 108.8% year-on-year inflation? Worse than the currency crisis that keeps the country on the edge of the precipice? Worse than the drought of reserves that forces an adjustment so that the IMF disburses the money for the next commitments? Counterfactual and difficult to sustain.
Cristina ignored Alberto Fernandez, her pick for the fourth and most dramatic K administration. The President was the only one who was not invited to the party, although he was a key player in the early years of Kirchnerism. He was sentenced to that sentence by his mentor. Such an ostensible failure is not forgiven. Although that failure is also hers.