Juan Manzur is one of the names of the day. Cristina Kircher gave him her blessing and the governor of Tucumán will finally be the running mate of Interior Minister Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro, on the K list to compete in the PASO of Unity for the Fatherland against Daniel Scioli.
A little less than five years ago, the former chief of staff and now brand new candidate of the head of the Senate for the primary election had affirmed that the political cycle of the former president was over.
The Tucuman llo said in an interview published on September 8, 2018 in Clarín. On that occasion, Manzur had stated that "in politics, cycles are fulfilled. Bush, Clinton or De Gaulle fulfilled cycles, Cristina too."
"I say this with respect and humility. She was twice elected president and is an important leader. But in politics the cycles are fulfilled. Bush, Clinton or De Gaulle fulfilled cycles, so did she. I appreciate that she is a senator and that she can contribute. But that's it, it's over," he said at the time.
In the interview he had also revealed that he had not maintained contact with the then senator since 2015, despite the fact that in 2009 he had assumed as Minister of Health of the Nation, under the first presidency of Cristina Kirchner.
Asked, at the time, if Peronism lacked a self-criticism about transparency, he replied: "In the country, fortunately, the justice system is independent. If someone did things that do not correspond, there is Justice. If some writings appear, let the Justice investigate and determine what happened. Justice must move forward and we must all be available."
From Lebanon to Matanza, from the PJ to the Maronite faith
Juan Luis Manzur was born in San Miguel del Tucumán on January 8, 1969. He received his medical degree in this province and completed his degree in Public Health from the UBA. His first public office was as vice minister of health in St. Louis. He moved to La Matanza, and in 2001, he became Secretary of Health of that municipality under the administration of Alberto Balestrini.
In 2003, he returned to Tucumán to be provincial health minister and in 2007 he became vice governor, a position he took leave from to assume as national minister to Cristina Kirchner in 2009. In the 2011 elections he re-elected José Alperovich as vice president and in 2015, in elections marked by controversy, he was elected governor.
Already in 2019, he ran again for governor and won. That position was temporarily left in the hands of his vice president and now governor-elect, Osvaldo Jaldo, to be Alberto Fernández's chief of staff.
But in February of this year he resigned from the Chief of Cabinet to face the failed electoral campaign for a new term in Tucumán, when the Justice put a brake on his aspirations.
At the beginning of last May, the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the suspension of the elections that were to be held on Sunday, May 14 in Tucumán based on a precautionary measure presented by the opposition to request the annulment of the formula of the ruling party headed by Juan Manzur. However, the situation was resolved when the Tucuman reported that he was declining his candidacy for lieutenant governor.
Finally, the elections in Tucumán were held on June 11, where Osvaldo Jaldo won a broad electoral victory that will allow him to retain provincial hegemony for another four years.
Juan Manzur and Osvaldo Jaldo celebrated the PJ's victory in Tucumán.Photo: Rafael Mario Quinteros
From his grandparents, who landed in Tucumán in the early twentieth century and died without speaking Spanish, Juan Luis Manzur inherited Maronite Catholicism that traveled from Lebanon to San Miguel, where the now governor murmurs and listens to rituals in Aramaic and Syriac. That faith, curious and marginal in Argentina but essential in Lebanon – he details that to be president you have to be Maronite – he combined with Peronism, which he arrived when he was already a doctor.
In the PJ he was linked, years later, with Alberto Balestrini, the deceased former head of La Matanza, whom Manzur knew how to call his "boss." Together with Balestrini, as Matanzas Secretary of Health, he went through the fire of 2001.
"Very ugly days, a tremendous situation," recalled the Peronist leader, who was an official of the former governor of San Luis, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá and then of José Alperovich, a radical who became Peronized and governed Tucumán until 2015.
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