This week, if there are no other emergencies, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta will surrender to the evidence of the polls and will offer the head of Fernán Quirós, the competent Buenos Aires Health Minister, to the unity of his party in the City, the only bastion in which the PRO has governed for 15 years in a row.
The formal beneficiary will be Jorge Macri but the final recipient of the gesture will be another Macri, the former president. Fulfilling that commitment will not heal the wounds that remained in the relationship between Macri and Larreta, injured from the moment in which the head of government deployed his strategy of putting his presidential ambition above any other objective.
This is not a minor fact that deserves to be reviewed. Finally, Larreta must recognize that his rebellion against Macri, at least so far, did not favor him within his party but caused internal preferences to lean towards Patricia Bullrich, who received a boost after the former president announced that he would not be a candidate. That step aside, it is also admitted among his relatives, benefited Javier Milei in a significant portion.
However, attention must be paid to the objective of the head of government trying to establish links beyond the PRO. If you are thinking now of Schiaretti or Peronism not K, it is part of speculations and indications, nothing more.
Bullrich's electoral strength is, in part, growing due to the contribution of radicals who aspire to follow or reach Congress and defend mayorships. Paradoxically, it is the party in which Larreta aims to sustain his alliance to win the internal one. While much of the friction with Macri and a sector of the PRO was to defend their links with Martín Lousteau – the radical who is in real competition to succeed Larreta – the lack of definition of radicalism as a party ends up causing an effect contrary to that expected by the current head of government.
The radicals will debate the future course at the June 12 Convention. The current confusion in the UCR led one of its most lucid members to say with impious irony that radicalism is failing with all success. One of the most serious problems, it is argued, is that Gerardo Morales, the current head of the UCR and testimonial presidential candidate, made a very premature choice of alliances with Larreta and that he now finds it very difficult to retrace. The party does not have a competitive candidate nor is it united. One of these two conditions must be met so that the UCR does not end, as it threatens to end, tied to the rack of torments of the PRO intern, with a certain risk that the party division will manifest itself crudely.
The card they are playing now – and on which Facundo Manes depends to continue dreaming of a presidential race – is that Together for Change agrees on common lists of legislators, as in 2015. You can risk: more than reserved prognosis.
The bitter internal conflict between Bullrich and Larreta, and the state of confusion of radicalism, benefit the rise of Milei also driven by his outsider status and his anarcho-liberal theories, which, it is almost too much to anticipate, may soon change as he feels that power approaches him. This rise revealed by the polls is also mounted on the skepticism and resignation of growing sectors of society that would like or want to try other formulas in the face of the inefficiency of the current ones. The growth of this disruptive option is a revealing measure of the failure of the political leadership, responsible for this birth that is not a national creation but that shows that we Argentines do not deprive ourselves of anything.
To put the PASO in perspective, Together for Change predicts that the most voted presidential candidate in August could be Milei. However, they believe that this feared scenario can be reversed in the general elections. Although it is suspected that Kirchnerism, if it stays out of the second round, will play Russian roulette by silently supporting the libertarian with the idea that his hypothetical triumph will give way to a short-lived government and a quick return. Again, a crude reasoning.
What is clearer is that the ruling party is still trapped in the doubts that cross Cristina Kirchner about what to do. The act of the 25th was a demonstration of internal forces that can serve to quell for now any challenge but that seems insufficient for August and October. The polls sing the fractions: closer to a fifth than a third for the ruling party.
Although Cristina disguised the silk monkey, by saying that this government (the one she elected) is better than Macri, she must recognize that her artifact with the guitarist Fernández was a conclusive and resounding failure. Can you trip over the same stone?
Sergio Massa, one of those chosen by Cristina for the front row of the box along with Kicillof and Wado de Pedro, continues to snort against a PASO with many candidates. He insists that the ballot box legitimize a single candidate. The economy minister put up with Cristina ranting once again against the IMF, which is the only noose on which the government is hanging to reach the elections, because it has its strongest alliance with her. They suffer from mutual dependence. Meanwhile, if he influenced the prosecutor Marijuan, who requested the dismissal of Cristina in the case of the K money route, thus demonstrating that he can better fulfill the promises that Fernández, it will remain for the legitimate political conjecture. The invitation to Máximo Kirchner to the trip that today leaves for China has an undeniable meaning: not only to maintain but to increase his closeness with Cristina thinking about his political future.
Massa will now go to Beijing and Shanghai with the ruling party without a candidate and, also, it is presumed that he will go to the United States later with the same uncertainty before the concern of those who must give him a break.
There is another important factor: Massa, although he uses his best skills as an illusionist, does not agree with the economic ideas that Cristina enunciated in the box of Plaza de Mayo, whose main supporter is Kicillof, who is responsible for the stagnation and decline that led to the electoral defeat of 2015. In preparing for another defeat, Cristina is more committed to preserving her political strength than to the electoral fortunes of the ruling party, which is striving for the first time not to be left out of the fight for the presidency. If it happens, the Peronist reconfiguration will be inevitable. And the square of 25 become a sepia photo of what was.
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