Together for Change is producing an exceptional event in Argentine politics. Five months before the presidential election, it appears submerged in a maelstrom of crisis difficult to understand if one accepts that, even with the irruption of the libertarian deputy Javier Milei, it appears as the coalition with the greatest possibilities of replacing the government of Alberto and Cristina Fernández in December.
This crisis would reveal, above all, that the value of unity shaken these years was based more on the need to resist Kirchnerism than on true strategies and common convictions to address the future. The most curious thing is that the resolution of disputes is left for the final minutes. Should the coalition be expanded or not?
Can it be done to the right, near the counties of Milei? Or agreeing with the Peronists that the Kirchnerist sectarianism was responsible for leaving this time on the sidelines? These are vertebral discussions that only came to light when the candidates began to take shape to fight for the presidency.
Anything else. The leaders of Together for Change, always avoiding details, took care to ensure that the coalition's economists would have a clear diagnosis of the economic and social reality. Also notion of the possible paths to be traveled in the search for some way out.
Question: Would such programs serve in the same way for a supposed unity with libertarians as with Peronists? The inconsistencies stand out. Perhaps there is also in the opposition – in the style of K – a narrative that surpasses what happens as reality.
The proposal of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta to propose to incorporate the governor of Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti, to Juntos exposed the consistency and the personal and collective pending accounts that subsist in the opposition coalition. The political parcelling out was almost automatic. The head of the City was accompanied by Gerardo Morales, head of the UCR, Elisa Carrió, Martín Lousteau, candidate for the Buenos Aires mayoralty, Miguel Pichetto and a fringe of his own party, the PRO. From the other camp, with Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich at the head, they came out to question him with fire. Even a bulk of the radical leadership and sectors also representative of Macrismo.
In the midst of Larreta's move with Schiaretti, Macri showed up with Luis Juez in Córdoba. Photo: Capture
Never before in recent years has it been possible to notice such an ostensible climate of tension in Together for Change. The possibility of a rupture hovers like a ghost. The best antidote, however, would be in the fragmentation itself caused by Rodríguez Larreta's audacity. That hypothetical rupture would leave both sides with almost no possibility of power. At the mercy of the challenges of Milei ("if Bullrich wants, let him come", they repeat in La Libertad Avanza) or also of the miracles of resurrection that Kirchnerism never ends up abandoning. The immolation of Together for Change, in such a case, would fit into the extravagance that usually characterizes Argentine politics.
The Head of the City has always repeated that to face the very serious crisis that the Kirchner government will leave will be necessary, at least. His movement has been consistent with his sayings. The incomprehensible would be the opportunity. Two weeks before the closing of the lists to formalize alliances. With a collaborator, Governor Schiaretti, whom Together for Change seeks to dethrone to end a dynasty that the Cordovan shared with the late José Manuel de la Sota.
This is an internal debate that should surely have been raised much earlier. Another blunder involves the execution of the maneuver: Rodríguez Larreta supports in Córdoba the candidacy of Luis Juez, an old adversary of Schiaretti. The news became public, on the other hand, almost simultaneously with the heavy defeat that the Peronism of Córdoba suffered last Sunday in municipal elections at the hands of Together for Change. They fell, among several, Pejotista bastions such as La Calera, Anisacate and Santa Rosa.
The crisis in full swing does not seem to have changed Rodríguez Larreta's position so far. As never before, Mauricio Macri took care to face it publicly. Bullrich anticipated it when he denounced that the Chief of the City had "thrown a bomb." The former president, who once said he was "disillusioned" with his disciple, said from Cordoba that he "does not understand his decisions." He accused him of "inconsulto". And other herbs. With Spectator Judge.
Nor is this the first conflict between them. The prelude occurred when the engineer claimed his cousin, Jorge Macri, as the only candidate of the PRO for the City. Larreta decided to bring Soledad Acuña, the Minister of Education, and Fernán Quirós, in charge of Health, recognized for their work during the pandemic, to the competition. The mayor also did nothing to prevent the candidacy of Lousteau, protected by radical sectors. Finally Acuña declined and Quirós accepted a polling mechanism so that the former mayor of Vicente López is a solitary candidate of the PRO.
That episode and the new one of Schiaretti would be concealing, perhaps, something else. Larreta's intention to impose his own leadership that, until his electoral departure, indisputably corresponded to Macri. Here, too, the times chosen may be objectionable.
Jorge Macri and Patricia Bullrich. The cousin of the former president will be the only candidate in the City.
The engineer confessed when taking his electoral step aside that he had won a fight against his ego. Rodríguez Larreta's latest moves would have reversed that relationship of forces. The former president does not resign himself to observing from an audience the definition of the candidacies of Together for Change. Less if you perceive that at some point you could be spinning in a vacuum.
A few weeks ago the former candidate for governor of Buenos Aires, Joaquin de la Torre, an ally of Bullrich, demanded that "Larreta get off and stop fucking around." For the only time the Head of the City came out to reply to him. No one knows if his outburst was an individual gesture or spurred on from some important sectors of the PRO. Which would include, of course, the lady candidate. Whose aesthetic and verbal profile is mutating. Larreta has turned from rival to enemy. Bad symptom perhaps for the votes of both to converge in the general elections.
That episode passed. Although Macri's visit to Cordoba yesterday was again prowling. In a provincial opposition universe rarefied by Rodriguez Larreta's bet with Schiaretti, the bravado of the former mayor of San Miguel was heard with recurrence. "Will Macri finally be able, if the crisis deepens, to ask Horacio to get off?" Very difficult. Improbable. It would be the sign of an anticipated shipwreck.
See also
