While his two rivals swear that if they win the presidential race they will remain faithful to themselves, Sergio Massa suggests that he will become a very different person from the Minister of Economy who, by common agreement, is causing a series of disasters. that will cost the country a lot. He says that, once installed in the Casa Rosada, he will call “the best, it doesn’t matter if they come from radicalism, from Pro, or from Javier Milei’s party.”
And about Kirchnerism? It would seem that Cristina’s slopes do not appear in her plans because what she has in mind is a government that would be quite similar to the one proposed by Patricia Bullrich. It would not be too surprising, then, if, after some allusions to how fundamental patriotic duties are, an eventual President Massa invited Carlos Melconian to succeed him in the place he currently occupies, who would like the candidate of Together for Change to return to the Ministry of Security and that Milei or one of his partners would be in charge of the Central Bank.
Massa is an octopus that has become accustomed to grabbing everything within reach of its many tentacles. You will know that, as an electoral strategy, the one you imply when you talk about a government of “the best” has many merits. If the idea spread that hers would be a government of “national unity,” she could get the votes of radicals and supporters of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta who are convinced that Patricia is a dangerous rightist who would not hesitate to break the heads of picketers and leftists. that cause him difficulties, in addition to those of Juan Schiaretti from Córdoba; Combined with the votes from Kirchnerists and other Peronists, they would allow him to enter the runoff, and then take full advantage of the fear that Milei is a delusional man with authoritarian instincts who would not hesitate to behave like a dictator.
He is not harmed by the widespread conviction that he is the least reliable man in the permanent political cast. No one ignores that he is such a chameleon that he is capable of adapting to any circumstance. If Argentina were the mythical “normal country” that so many fantasize about, its truly extraordinary flexibility would be considered a vice, but because it is what it is, it offers advantages that are inaccessible to less pragmatic politicians.
With great caution, because he still needs to count on the votes of the Kirchnerists, Massa is separating himself from the movement that has brought him to where he is. He cannot help but know that it would be absurd to ask “the best” of the opposition groups to live with individuals who will most likely end up behind bars or, in Cristina’s case, under house arrest in one of the properties she has managed to acquire. , although it is feasible that the vice president will seek refuge in Cuba or another friendly country. Be that as it may, it is reasonable to assume that the definitive break with Kirchnerism will come when she has already secured the presidency.
Judging by what he says, Massa sees himself as the head of a coalition so broad that he would be in a position to organize an economy that, thanks largely to his willingness to subordinate absolutely everything to electoralism, is falling apart. Although his adversaries have the right to remind him that he is primarily responsible for the prevailing chaos, he will try to make people think that the atrocities he is committing with the “platita plan” and so on are the work of the Kirchnerists who have him surrounded and who, freed from his guardianship by God and the electorate, he will without delay become a paragon of good sense. It would be a metamorphosis comparable to that experienced by the manirroto populist Carlos Menem after colliding with economic reality.
Although it would not be entirely surprising if Massa dreamed of making the great Menem, it happens that at that time the country still had sufficient financial resources to make viable the stabilizing scheme that was applied by Domingo Cavallo and that, for a decade, banished inflation. and made countless positive changes possible. However, today the situation is decidedly worse than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. There is nothing in the Central Bank’s vaults except a huge amount of promissory notes and, for understandable reasons, very few international investors are willing to lend a cent to Argentina.
Massa has never cared about contradictions. The fact that during his term as Minister of Economy and virtual President of the Republic he has concentrated on assembling a financial bomb so powerful that, when it explodes, it could mortally wound the next government, has not prevented him from making efforts to ensure that it becomes a victim of his own cunning. The logical thing would be for him to try to guarantee that Milei won the elections that are now imminent, but his attitude remains that of a candidate who hopes to triumph; If the messages sent by the pollsters mean anything, it is at least conceivable that he will achieve it.
For Massa, everything is a question of stages. When it was in her interest to oppose Cristina, he did so unceremoniously. In 2019, he chose to ally himself with her again. Now that “the doctor,” whose power is rapidly evaporating, is becoming less and less useful to her, she is preparing to abandon her.
Massa is betting that an amnesiac electorate will soon forget the official who paid homage to him regularly, shelving, for a while, the man who said that corruption disgusted him and that for this reason he was determined to sweep away the gnocchi from La Cámpora de the places in the public sector they occupied. In an era in which videos abound, one would assume that politicians would find it extremely difficult to persuade people of the sincerity of characters as changeable as Massa, but it would seem that, on the contrary, it is even easier to do so today than it used to be. which was before the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of electronic social media.
In addition to minimizing the importance of his catastrophic management as Minister of Economy, Massa has to try to put distance between himself and the endemic corruption that afflicts almost the entire local political scene. Although it would seem that the majority is no longer moved by the examples provided by leaders, legislators, operators, judges and others who, despite earning relatively little in cash, manage to accumulate large fortunes, from time to time episodes do occur that do motivate indignation. .
To Massa’s concern, two episodes of the type that impact public opinion occurred as the prolonged electoral tournament entered what could be its final stage. Although with few exceptions politicians tried to prevent the scandal unleashed by “Chocolate”, the Peronist leader who collected money contributed, knowingly or not, for fifty gnocchi from the ATM of a bank in La Plata, to later deliver it to their political bosses in the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires, could not remain silent in the face of the uproar caused by the dissemination of photos of the until then Buenos Aires Chief of Staff Martín Insaurralde living the good life with a model on a very expensive yacht in the waters from the Mediterranean.
The majority did not take long to reach the conclusion that the ostentatious – many would say obscene – behavior of a key man of Kirchnerism reflected the indifference of very wealthy politicians to the suffering of a people that has been brutally impoverished, a conviction that immediately gave rise to one of the sporadic attacks of moralism that here, as in many other countries, take by surprise those who believed that they had not violated any rules.
Forced to disassociate himself from the matter as soon as possible, Massa, who, like everyone else, already knew that over the years Insaurralde had become, by unclear means, a spendthrift billionaire who, reportedly, recently sealed a divorce Giving his ex-wife a whopping 20 million dollars, he tried to cut things off by ordering her to put an end to her political functions.
It will work? His rivals smell blood and will do everything they can to take advantage of the wound that has opened, treating Massa as one of the most powerful members of a brotherhood that is notoriously corrupt. They may also ask him to explain the reasons why his wife, Malena Galmarini, authorized the purchase of 620 vehicles for the state company, AySA, of which he is the owner, at prices that, according to opposition politicians, are much higher than those on the commercial market. .
Genuine Kirchnerists do not want Massa; They see him as a neoliberal infiltrator who could betray them at any moment. Those who hate the Kirchnerists believe him to be the amoral accomplice of a gang of criminals who have caused damage that is difficult to repair to the country and who, if he came to power, would limit himself to promoting the always corrupt crony capitalism. And as if all that were not more than enough, they can accuse him of being most responsible for the inflationary surge that is causing countless personal tragedies. With all that against him, it is a true miracle that Massa, a born survivor, could still be elected president, but judging by the country’s political history, virtually anything is possible here.
