The PRO was born as a party strongly focused on the figure of Mauricio Macri, its leader and founder. After the electoral defeat of 2019, for the first time in its history it is in a situation of competition for internal power.
Without solid formal mechanisms to resolve its internal issues, the PRO requires the good will of its leaders to reach agreements. Macri is no longer the undisputed leader and its challengers do not finish taking definitive advantages.
Horacio Rodriguez Larreta currently has more resources than any other PRO leader: controls the government of the city of Buenos Aires, the main electoral bastion, from where he managed to build a solid network of supporters for his presidential aspirations.
Patricia Bullrichthe defiant one, has neither the financial resources nor the apparatus that Larreta has, but he knew how to transform a formal position that nobody wanted – the presidency of the party – into a place of power from which he wove adhesions in the interior of the country and from where he tuned in to the (increasingly polarized) hard core of the PRO electorate.
The strategy of moderation by Rodríguez Larreta corresponds to an extinct country. The same one in which Alberto Fernández made his way in 2019. That country hoping to get out of the crisis that began in 2018 and to avoid a worsening of political polarization was devoured by the pandemic and due to the prolongation of the social and economic crisis, but also due to the strength that a certain interpretation of their failures acquired in the hard core of the two competing coalitions: to govern, instead of moderation, more radicalization is needed.
Aware of the mismatch between the idea that brought him here and the reality that overwhelms him, Larreta seeks to hit the table so that they listen to him and, eventually, so that they elect him: he speaks against inclusive language, against social plans, the police repression of social mobilizations overreacts, even more so when they are carried out by Kirchnerism.
But every time you take a step in that direction Bullrich doubles the bet. And then Larreta returns to her strategy of moderation, and with her to that uncomfortable position of a good candidate for her mother-in-law -the leaders of her party, the establishment- but unattractive for the love-electoral market. It is likely that in these comings and goings a good part of the opposition’s tactical exercise will be consumed, in a pre-electoral year that is not very peaceful.
* Professor of Political Sociology at EIDAES-UNSAM, CONICET researcher. His latest books are The Long March of Cambiemos (2017) and Diminished Parties. Democratic Representation in Contemporary Latin America (2021, co-editor).
by Gabriel Vommaro
