2023-08-06 02:55:00
For the first time in two decades, their names will not appear on any ballot. They ran, or were run, from the centrality of the forces that gave birth and led. And as a coincidental novelty, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri look ghostly in this campaign. They are, but they hardly appear.
The vice president barely participated in three acts together with Sergio Massa since the lists closed. In all cases, closed to a handful of officials and leaders. No public or militancy.
This distance from CFK could be curious, since she was key to enthroning Massa as a way of eliminating the dispute that had arisen between Wado de Pedro and Daniel Scioli. In particular, because he assumed better than anyone the noise that he made in Kirchnerismo such a decision: you had to convince your own troops. Thus he contextualized his incontinence to unusually explain the negotiations for the definition of the candidacies.
Near the vice they consider that the loyalty of the K vote towards the minister-candidate is more a task of the leadership and of Massa himself. In addition, as they argue, Cristina avoids making her support explicit in the face of the unequal bid with Juan Grabois, for whom she feels special affection.
In other sectors of Unión por la Patria they prefer to stay with the idea that it is pure pragmatism. Grabois expresses hard Kirchnerism and his presence in PASO is a way to contain the possible flight of votes to the left.
It must be remembered that Grabois’s candidacy can only be explained from the go-ahead of Kirchnerism, which allowed him (to Massa’s chagrin) to post the rest of the UxP lists throughout the country. That had been forbidden to Scioli and his main political patron, Alberto Fernández.
This K stone in Massa’s shoe becomes a grain of sand compared to the convenient silence of Cristina, and La Cámpora & Cía, in relation to the measures launched in the name of the agreements between the head of the Palacio de Hacienda and the IMF. Campaign benefits.
Perhaps this Christian distance will be revealed after the primaries, when Massa is established as the sole candidate of the ruling party. Or maybe not: CFK has been insisting to her people that they should take charge and not continue waiting for what she says or does. It is seen to be difficult. Even his son Máximo maintained in public that he expected her mother to participate more in this pre-election time, despite the fact that in private she claims “don’t screw her anymore.”
Some governors and leaders with access to Massa believe, however, that the vice president is not very involved because she has already obtained what she was looking for: she filled the legislative lists, especially those of the province of Buenos Aires, with people who in theory would be loyal to her. It is his way of facing the probable hypothesis of defeat.
In this regard and low, there are already complaints and returns. One of those changes would be the vice president’s difficulties in getting the Senate to approve judicial appointments, among them that of chambermaid Ana Figueroa, who should retire. The magistrate is key in the Court of Appeal that must decide whether or not to reopen the Hotesur case, where in addition to Cristina, her children Máximo and Florencia are involved. Without enough power in the next Congress, the future looks bleaker.
From owner to minority partner. Macri is going through another type of sunset, the one that they try to impose on him. He secretly imagined an “operative outcry” that would lead him to his second time at the Casa Rosada. Then he bet on being the leader who would enlighten his people about who, how and where they had to go to retake power. It was all in vain.
He mutters an unalterable grudge against Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, which only slowed down because some close friends warned him that his electoral preferences are growing steadily. Even, much to his regret, he had to bite his tongue to avoid replying to Larretista’s opinion that his way of managing the Nation was a failure.
For now, the possibility of Larreta winning the Juntos por el Cambio internship prevented him from making his support for Patricia Bullrich explicit, whom he has been propping up in more ways than one.
That abstentionist fiction of the former president could be broken in the next few hours. Macri analyzes announcing that he will vote for Bullrich as a way of giving support to his favorite candidate in the final stretch of pre-PASO, in reaction to the public endorsement given to Larreta days ago by María Eugenia Vidal. He was outraged by what he considered a “betrayal.”
Bullrich’s team is debating whether Macrista’s help is appropriate. Those who are open to pessimism think that it may be the bear hug that ends up sinking it, after several recent setbacks. On the optimistic side, there is a belief that this will align behind her a large part of the 40% who voted for Macri in 2019, when he lost his reelection.
Without practically participating in events with the main candidates (only Néstor Grindetti has shown it in some spot), it would be convenient for Macri to take note that favoring a certain candidacy is far from guaranteeing victory. In the current campaign he played hard in favor of Carolina Losada in Santa Fe and Luis Juez and Rodrigo de Loredo in Córdoba. Pure defeat. Is it for this reason that he just went out on Friday on a timid walk with his cousin Jorge to proselytize around the City?
Like Cristina, Macri concentrates a hard voter, but a minority, on horseback for being two of the leaders with the worst image in the country. Perhaps that also explains this kind of elegant ostracism in which both are immersed. Let us doubt that they resign themselves to it.
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#Elegant #ostracism #Cristina #Macri