Alberto Fernández has just given up his candidacy. The President has been immersed, for some time now, in an emotional seesaw. At times he thinks, as was leaked in a chat he had with ultra-K journalist Roberto Navarro, that “twenty years of Kirchnerism is going to end.” When he has an attentive audience, he even develops that thesis and shows what he maintains to be irrefutable proofs.
He says he “managed” to win two key battles. The first was the resistance that he gave against the establishment of a “political table”, with Christian and Massista participation, with which they wanted to “tell him how to govern.” It is a logic that, as usually happens in the Albertist world, has some truth and some falsehood, although – and those who treat the president agree on this – the question remains to what extent Fernández is aware of this last part.
It is that governance, at this end of the mandate, depends on Sergio Massa, who has no problem stating that he makes decisions about the economy without even consulting or notifying the president. The Government is made up of different groups that mistrust each other, and that operate something as sensitive as the State, as if they were islands.
The other big issue that Fernández is busy with is the elections. The PASO are already a fact accepted by all the tribes of the Frente de Todos, and it is one of the elements on which Alberto bases himself to affirm that he still has some power to assert it. Giving up his candidacy was the first move. But there were others. After enduring the very tense meeting with Máximo Kirchner and other priests in the PJ, in mid-February, Fernández ordered the party to begin ordering its institutional life in view of the voting.
Agustín Rossi, his increasingly close chief of staff, led a meeting of the “technical teams”, the members of Peronism who manage the logistics of the campaign, which had the striking reappearance of the former Minister of Health, Ginés González García, that he had resigned -and on very bad terms with Alberto- due to the VIP vaccination scandal. On Friday, April 21, there was another meeting at that headquarters. In the Government they say that Alberto brought forward his decision to get off before that conclave because otherwise the hornet’s nest was going to arrive very upset.
Fernández’s other move was to push a candidate. What the President thinks internally is difficult to know, but the idea that he can push someone of his own has a logic: his government had so few results that he managed to make Kirchnerism, the main partner in space, lose its electoral appeal. In the mud, without Cristina Kirchner in the middle, they are all at the same almost underground level. The President has already activated his plan B: Daniel Scioli and Victoria Tolosa Paz.
That idea was going well in this part of the camp, but it had an unexpected chapter. It is that the former motorboat met on Wednesday the 12th with the mayor of Quilmes, Mayra Mendoza, a close ally of Máximo Kirchner who does not take important steps without first consulting the camporista leader. It was a photo that fell heavily on Albertism, where they want to present that formula as the President’s own idea.
There they sniffed out a possible betrayal on the part of the former governor. Scioli, quick of reflexes, circulated the image as proof that he could be the “consensus” candidate, since he also had K support. Close to Scioli they trust that, with the economy entering a serious inflationary spiral, they can beat the minister in one STEP.
But he is not the only one who is moving. In the Economy, despite inflation and the rise in the blue dollar, they continue to present Massa as the only possible candidate. “If Sergio does badly, everything flies and no one has a chance. And if he can more or less accommodate something, have a last month of inflation below four points, he has a chance. The market today only trusts him, ”says one of his managers.
Just in case, Pedro’s Interior Minister “Wado” is already moving. He was the only one of the camporistas high command to publicly support the idea of PASO -something that in the most radical tribes of Kirchnerism, who are still waiting for a definition of CFK, went down badly- and he has been touring the country for a while. It is the most likely plan for the Christian wing of the coalition. With CFK with a “broken finger”, Fernández, Massa and the Kirchnerists with their own flight, such as “Wado”, look at this contest with open eyes.
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