The early recognition of Sergio Massa’s defeat left behind a strong message that the minister gave during his speech: he announced his retirement. “Finally, I want to tell you, from a personal point of view, that today ends a stage in my political life,” he said. And he warned: “Life will surely bring me other tasks and other responsibilities. But they will always count on me.”
The announcement, in the midst of a moment of surprise and distress, was not improvised. Massa had been talking to her children about the subject for some time. It was Tomás, her youngest, who asked her to leave her public work. “I have family pressure to do less exposed things,” Massa had confessed in a streaming during the campaign. “And there we are, with the commitment to look at things more from the outside.” Defeat hastened that decision.
In any case, no one in Peronism dares to affirm that, after finishing his term in the Ministry of Economy, Massa will move to the private sphere. “Here, no one retires completely,” says a Peronist leader, laughing. And he points out, for example, Elisa Carrió, who announced her retirement only to return years later because the country demanded it. Tigre’s, they believe, could run just to catch his breath.
Doubts.
The short circuits of Massa and his children due to politics were several. According to “Toto”, the youngest, the first episode of strong family disagreements occurred in August 2022, when he took over as Minister of Economy. There was an argument, which the leader described as a “strong fight.” “I always see you tired and with dark circles under your eyes. I’m 17 years old and it’s always been the same,” Tomás reproached him.
The second crossing occurred when Massa imposed himself as the sole candidate of Peronism. “My children didn’t want it,” Malena Galmarini revealed in an interview. The father asked them for one more chance. That possibility was buried by the victory of Javier Milei.
The frustration was such that Massa’s first reaction was to release everything right there, that same night. He threatened to ask for leave and delegate the ministry to his team, and he blamed his opponent for what he could do financially. Neither. After criticism of both statements, on Monday he met in Tigre with his cabinet and they announced continuity.
Beyond their intra-family discussion, there are many Peronist leaders who acknowledge the minister for having reached the stage of the second round even with a deep economic crisis. And they understand that soon, when the storm of the election passes, the future of the PJ will begin to be debated. He has his own stamp, good representation in Congress, barely 51 years old and in the middle there will be a headless Justicialism. Even after defeat, Massa has fertile ground to grow.
For her part, Cristina Kirchner, who is also returning to the plain, assures that she is not going to retire. She warned that she will continue to be active, “as I did all my life since I was young,” she clarifies. “Let’s get out of the habit of only having a position to do politics. And much less in Peronism,” she said during the campaign. But the one who wanted to put a stop to it was Aníbal Fernández: when they asked him about the vice president’s future, he protested. “That is already prehistory. No history, I would tell you,” he stated.
Massa and Cristina agree on something. They asked for a generational renewal to replace them for the next elections. If the replacement does not appear, they will be ready to return to the ring.
Flat.
For now, without public positions, one of the most important fronts that Massa will have to face is the judicial one, a task to which Cristina is more accustomed. The Minister of Economy was sued for what the opposition called the “platita plan”, and there is another important cause that also affects him, the case of “Chocolate” Rigau.
María Eugenia Talerico, leader of the PRO, pressures to advance the judicial presentation she made with lawyer Daniel Sabsay. “I hope that Sergio Massa is finally investigated by the criminal justice system,” she said after the defeat. For the former vice president of the UIF, the minister “wasted 3 points of GDP, equivalent to 15 billion dollars, in his electoral campaign at a critical moment in the country, where this waste aggravates the situation of our population in the midst of a profound economic crisis”.
This complaint does not worry too much in Massa’s environment. The thing is that political decisions are hardly judicializable. However, the file advancing on “Chocolate” Rigau knocks on the door of his office. For now, he escalated to the arrest of Claudio and Facundo Albini, employees of the Legislature, in charge of collecting the 27 million pesos per month that were extracted from 80 debit cards. The problem for Massa is that the Albinis would respond, according to the expert opinion on his cell phone, to a historic soldier of theirs, Rubén Eslaiman, the vice president of the provincial Chamber of Deputies. And the detainees would be willing to talk.
In this context, Massa evaluates his opportunities for the future. He will have to face a Peronist maxim that indicates that defeats are not forgiven, even when the campaign context was very unfavorable. Therefore, in the plan to rebuild his political future, the former candidate starts at a disadvantage compared to Axel Kicillof and other interior governors.
But the minister has already demonstrated resilience. He does not forget that Néstor Kirchner predicted, back in 2008, his political fate: “You are going to arrive,” he told him after inviting him to sit for a moment in the Rivadavia Chair. When he accepts the heavy defeat, in the midst of a half-retirement demanded by his family, he will return to work for his goal.
