That the Front of All is broken into pieces is a reality as clear as the sun rising in the morning and the moon at night. But behind the breakdown of the ruling coalition there is another phenomenon that is happening, which is related to the first but is much deeper and has unforeseeable consequences. It is that not only the Front is split: what is also creaking is Kirchnerism, spent by two years of managing poor results and questioned by the unilateral decisions of Cristina and Máximo that no longer everyone shares. The end of a historical era is approaching in Argentina.
Sometimes the best way to understand a political process is to bring it closer to individual characters. What is a thesis is transformed, when it goes down to the plain, into racy discussions, fights that drag on for years, crossed accusations that lead to life-long relationships to a point of no return, or simply glimpses of reality that are left behind. to share. This is what has been happening to Aníbal Fernández, Luis D’Elía, Jorge Ferraresi, Sergio Berni, Agustín Rossi, and also to several intellectuals and journalists, all of them from the first hour of Christianity who today show their differences in public and in private. Something similar also happens in “Wado” De Pedro, who is far from criticizing Kirchnerism but who is now encouraged to show his own game and with an electoral scent.
The kids for liberation. What is happening in Kirchnerism was defined, a century ago, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. It is called “crisis of hegemony” and it happens when “the new does not finish being born and the old does not finish dying”. In this Argentine version of the Gramscian theory, what is dying is the vertical leadership of Cristina Kirchner, and therefore that of her son and that of La Cámpora. The decision not to accompany the agreement with the Fund, after which several of the protagonists of this note expressed discomfort that had come from before, was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It is clear that it is impossible to generalize and that each case is different. Jorge Ferraresi, Minister of Habitat and none other than the Vice President of the Instituto Patria, is still fighting for unity. The week the agreement was voted on in the Senate, he went to the CFK precinct to try to placate the vice president, and the weekend that followed he had a private meeting with Máximo Kirchner. Ferraresi, in private, insists that breaking up the Front would be a political error with catastrophic consequences and, although he would never say so in public, he does not share the course that Kirchnerism is taking. “There is a lack of pragmatism, some seem to live inside a thermos,” is a phrase that is heard by his ministry. But, unlike others who still keep their criticisms private, Ferraresi, with the back of his eleven years as mayor of Avellaneda, a historic bastion of Kirchnerism in the suburbs, has established a position in front of everyone. In mid-August, when the scandal over the party in Olivos crossed the country and especially unnerved the spirits of Kirchnerism, the minister came out to declare that Fernández should be in office for “eight years”. Then he doubled the bet: although he spoke privately with the President and told him that his resignation was available, Ferraresi, surprisingly, was one of those who did not join the wave of massive resignations after the PASO. “Either Alberto and Axel are re-elected or we all lose. There is no other option, the President must be strengthened”, is a reasoning that he often repeats, even before CFK.
Agustín Rossi, who was Minister of Defense until Alberto encouraged him to compete in Santa Fe -an action which, when Governor Perotti appointed his own candidate, he repented and abandoned him to his fate-, is in a path similar to that of of Ferraresi. Although the relationship with the president suffered due to the episode of the PASO in Santa Fe -weariness that was much more evident in the case of CFK, which directly militated against the rival candidate-, today Rossi says that the President must be “empowered”, because “he It’s the one with the pen.” “My militancy is very clear, I feel Kirchnerist and as such I think the right thing to do was to vote for the agreement. It is difficult to understand what else they proposed, where they want to go and where they want to lead the political force. You have to look forward,” he tells NOTICIAS. Rossi recovered the link with Alberto and in fact, every time there is a political tremor, his name is mentioned to join the Cabinet. “That bothers me a lot, because I’m not operating or working for it and I don’t know who invents it,” he says.
On the other hand, for others it is more difficult to separate the personal from the political. Aníbal Fernández, for example, comes from years of suffering wear and tear in his relationship with a part of Kirchnerism -who, he believes, did not militate as they should for their Buenos Aires candidacy in 2015-, and reached the point of having been a whole year, in 2018, without talking to Cristina. The Security Minister is one of those who are convinced that several in La Cámpora lost their compass a long time ago – “Máximo does not understand anything about politics”, is a maxim of Fernández – and that they are wrong in their inbred construction method. But in recent days those differences have escalated to perhaps a point of no return. The doubts expressed by the camperista leader Andrés Larroque about the President and Aníbal regarding their actions before and after the attack on the vice president’s office crossed a limit. “His silence is very striking to us,” said the camper leader, someone who does not usually move without the permission of CFK and less on such transcendental issues. Those who spoke with Aníbal in those days felt him angry as never before: for him, a Christian from the first hour who accompanied her in difficult moments, that they doubt that he intentionally neglected her is much more than he can tolerate.
Something similar happens to Luis D’Elía and Sergio Berni. The first felt abandoned in the more than a thousand days he spent in detention -“not once did CFK call me”-, a distance that increased when the camporismo, according to him, prevented Miles, his party, from officially joining the Front of All in 2019. But the debate over the agreement with the IMF was a turning point. “Cristina has to calm down, she is trying to ruin Alberto. This is not the time to do Troskokirchnerism ”, were some of the darts that he sent into space and especially to the boss. The Buenos Aires Security Minister directly “left” Kirchnerism. “It’s strange, for the first time in 30 years I don’t talk to Cristina,” he said in his privacy. Berni’s differences are above all with Máximo, with whom he had several run-ins before and after the PASO. “They thought that putting Agustina on the list (Propato, his wife, who is now a national deputy) would fix us, when we have been active in the Second Section for decades. Máximo does not understand anything ”, Berni continues to complain, to whom La Cámpora did not give place in the assembly of the lists in Zárate, his town. The final episode was the physical fight that he had with Máximo on the day of the vote, which did not escalate because they managed to separate them. “If they didn’t separate me, he’s still on the floor,” they heard the minister say. Those present say that, worse than what happened with Berni, was the discussion that Propato later had with CFK’s son. Since then, the minister has held on to his post only at the insistence of the governor, who does not want to hand him over, above all, because he does not know if he will later be able to appoint one of his own or he will be designated by Máximo’s finger, as happened with the taking over of his cabinet after I PASS them.
Open end. “You realize that something is wrong when our people insult historic, but seriously historic, guys who banked when we lost in 2015 and when everyone was falling into gray. We are overdrawn and in Cristina’s first ring they are all sniffs, nobody dares to tell her anything, ”says an official who has access to both sides of the official rift. The source hits the key: what this note tells is neither more nor less than the disintegration of Kirchnerism, a collapse that is very evident when even the “soldiers” of the first hour change trenches before it is too late . The battle is not yet lost but, it seems, it is a matter of time.
