"What's wrong with Horace?"
The question is recurrent in the universe of Mauricio Macri. This is not a question that seeks a complete answer. It has been formulated by operators, political leaders and friendly businessmen at the beginning of some occasional conversation, rather, in a rhetorical sense.
In the last two years, at times, that question came to unsettle the former president, but he never paid much attention to it, except when he felt that his old traveling companion slipped that his time in politics was over and that the vacant throne would promote a new leadership. For three months, however, the question became a heavy burden for him, who was accustomed to learning before and first of the decisions that the head of government was about to take. Everything changed definitively in the last 72 hours: the question became dramatic. Macri doesn't know what to answer.
The engineer landed today at 10.45 at the airport of Cordoba. The crisis of Together for Change for the candidacies and alliances for the next presidential elections force him to respond at every step about his relationship with Rodríguez Larreta, the man with whom he shares hundreds of secrets for more than 20 years, when the two put together Commitment for Change, the force that preceded the PRO, Cambiemos and Juntos por el Cambio. Before, during and after the flight, Macri repeated the same phrase: "I am disappointed."
"Disillusioned with what? We are in campaign and we are going to accelerate with what we think is convenient, "they say at the small table of the larretismo. The last maneuver, that of adding Juan Schiaretti, opened the final chapter of the distancing. Macri learned from the media of the statement that opened the discussion. The same as much of the space. Diego Santilli, the candidate for governor of Buenos Aires, was notified two hours earlier.
Luis Juez, who is competing against Schiaretti's gubernatorial candidate, Martin Llaryora, cried foul. Yesterday he traveled from Cordoba to Buenos Aires by car and went straight to the UCR Committee to try to break off the negotiations. Gerardo Morales threw him out: he told him that it was not in the plans to deal with that issue. Judge agreed to meet with Macri – with whom he never got along at all – to prevent, together, Schiaretti from making the leap to Together for Change. He did not believe Morales and distrusts Larreta. "I have a boludo face, but I use it for my own benefit," Juez said in private, trying to give a touch of humor to his anger.
Macri has a hard time explaining in public why he doesn't want Schiaretti now. He has maintained a bond with him for several decades and on more than one occasion both flirted with doing something under the same political umbrella. That is why Rodríguez Larreta sees Macri's position as a whim. Perhaps, in truth, he creates something else, as his team believes: that he does it to favor Patricia Bullrich.
For at least half a year, Larreta has maintained that the founder of the PRO took a clear position in favor of his internal rival. "They cannot ask us for loyalty when they ignore us and want to take us off the court," they explain in their environment. Take off the court. Perhaps that is the thrust they are waiting for. The last of a series. Eighteen days remain for the closing of lists. It's a lot in this context.
In the Macrismo they suspect that Larreta is rushing the entry of Schiaretti not to add him to the presidential race, but to promote him as an aspirant to vice president. It is a well-founded suspicion. The talks have already been opened, although probably those who participated in those talks deny it. "It would be a great goal. With Juan de vice we turn the election in Córdoba, "recognizes one of the larretistas more convinced that we have to bet on all or nothing before the closing of lists and that this "all or nothing" implies an open confrontation with Macri.
It is a move similar to the one Macri made in 2019, when he added Miguel Ängel Pichetto as his running mate, with the difference that Schiaretti is scored in the presidential competition. It does not appear, in principle, as a contender of weight. Although in Córdoba it maintains a high level of support and could keep 30 percent of the adhesions in the August primaries. His main adversary is Bullrich, who grows strongly in that province, and in which Macri obtained historic peaks in the runoff with Daniel Scioli. Larreta appears to be lagging behind. In the game of addition and subtraction, the head of government has an opportunity. The national outlook for him is nowhere near as encouraging as it was a year ago.
The rapprochement with Schiaretti opens another debate. What will happen to the UCR, which was excited about keeping the vice presidency? Gerardo Morales, who for now remains in the race for the Casa Rosada, was the perfect name for that position. There have been conversations for long months. Morales, perhaps, is waiting for a concrete offer.
Then came the name of Pichetto himself. "But today the one we like the most is the Cordoban," reveals a source in Larreta's inner circle. The ruse hides another motive: to start seducing governors for an eventual coalition government. This is a desire that cannot be entirely confessed. They are the same leaders who once believed in Kirchnerism and who today, out of conviction or simple speculation, threaten to break forever with everything that has to do with Cristina Kirchner.