Cristina Kirchner said goodbye to the city of Viedma with a message for the militancy: “It doesn’t matter what place one occupies, I will never abandon them in my life, whatever the place. Calm down, everyone.” This phrase was said on Friday, March 10, in the Rio Negro capital after speaking before an audience at the National University of Río Negro. Both during her presentation and on her way out, the militants who came to listen to her sang: “Cristina presidenta”. She let them sing, but in the end opened the umbrella. So that they are preparing, in case when the lists close on June 24, she is not leading the ballot.
The latest movements of the vice president seem to be traced to the strategy that Mauricio Macri is carrying out. In her role as majority leader of the Frente de Todos, she seeks to assert that political weight to mark the course that she believes is the right one. The operative clamor mounted by La Cámpora goes in that direction. Although they already take it for granted that the vice president will keep her word not to run for president, they are working to keep her in an expectant place. One of the slogans of the act “Fight and Come Back” that took place in Avellaneda last Saturday, March 11, was “Nothing without Cristina”, a copy of the same phrase “Nothing without Perón”, from the ’70s.
winks. As part of that task, CFK also sends signals to the opposition to seek a dialogue. Something similar to what she did in 2018 or 2019 when she was moderate and with intentions of dialogue. At that time, he defined himself as a “herbivorous mare”, emulating Juan Domingo Perón who, when he returned to the country after 18 years in exile, called himself “herbivorous lion”.
“I sincerely believe, and it is not the first time that they have listened to me, that it is necessary to agree,” he said in front of his followers. There he made a clarification about the impossibility of moving forward with an opposition idea of ”relaxing” the labor law, but he did say that he believes that an agreement can be reached to define two important issues: renegotiating the agreement with the IMF and defining how it will be done to get more dollars into the economy. It should be noted that for Cristina, the main reason for the cause of inflation is the lack of dollars in the economy and not the issuance.
The mayor of Buenos Aires Horacio Rodríguez Larreta thinks something similar, to whom she, without naming him, alluded to in her speech: “The other day, one of the main opposition candidates said that the one who said he was coming and removing the stocks was a blackmailer. Healthy gesture”. That phrase that Larreta said in an interview on Radio Miter seemed nice to Cristina, but she also liked what she said next. “Argentina today exports 17% of what it produces, when in the world there are countries that have natural resources like us, that export 40%.” The need to generate more dollars has aligned to CFK and Larreta and she seeks to get that message across to him.
Of course, he asks for it in his own way, with subtle ironies: “It is essential to change of actitud, which does not mean agreeing with them on things that we are surely not going to agree on, but on this. Basically, on the axis. Then people will vote if they like how one pays their salary, how they like the rate of the other -chicaneó-, but agree on this. Because if we do not agree on this, we can have twenty Vaca Muerta, eighty thousand tons of lithium, but we will continue to lack dollars.”
What matters. In the privacy of her apartment in Juncal and Uruguay, where she receives a few leaders or collaborators, Cristina says that for this year’s elections it is more important to work to preserve the province of Buenos Aires, Santa Cruz and the Quilmes mayor’s office. Buenos Aires for its electoral importance, Santa Cruz for being her own stronghold, and Quilmes for being the first experience of a La Cámpora militant at the head of a suburban mayor’s office. There is Mayra Mendoza. The presidential one, in private, gives it up for lost.
