They arrived together at PRO two decades ago. Today they prepare to compete. Without strong candidates from the other allies of Juntos Por el Cambio, the Buenos Aires internship would be resolved within the space between Cristian Ritondo and Diego Santilli. The fight is about to start.
With furious tours of the Province, election of a national “godfather” and official presentation, the race to try to succeed Axel Kicillof was inaugurated. From both corners they promise that it will be without cheap shots. But, in a campaign, promises are only good for breaking.
POINT. In Pinamar, Ritondo he came in first this week: he introduced his “management team” and showed off his credentials. There was support from Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich. She chose sides in return: if Santilli is sponsored by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, he was on the side of the “hawks”.
“We have a huge task and I fully trust this team,” he said. Ritondo before about 200 PRO leaders. Mary Eugenia Vidal, his former boss, endorsed him: “This group that is next to Cristian knows the Province, they governed it. There’s no way it’s going wrong.”
The agreement between Ritondo and Bullrich was born in September, in a meeting in La Matanza. “It’s a win-win”, they analyze in the PRO. The former Buenos Aires minister relies on the pre-candidate for the presidency, in case Vidal decides not to compete, and she adds a weighty leader, together with Joaquín de la Torre, to stomp in Buenos Aires.
Each team maintains its autonomy, explain the point guards, but they will cross paths in different acts to mark the pitch for larretismo. The video that Bullrich sent to Ritondo’s presentation to show his support is evidence of that.
Weeks ago, Ritondo had disembarked in San Miguel, De la Torre’s payments, to show the
collaboration between teams. “You can’t love what you don’t know,” said the Bullrich leader. And he completed: “Patricia chooses people from Buenos Aires to manage the province of Buenos Aires.” Santilli got the hint.
True to the Larreta style, your candidate does not answer. At least for now. He only made an appreciation of the general fight of the opposition: “More than hawks and doves, we look like geese,” he assured, referring to the game they played with the ruling party with internal discussions. Santilli has a plan for tours of the Province that includes meetings with space mayors and legislators. His fight is exclusively with Kicillof and the Frente de Todos. Above all, he anchored in insecurity.
The other dispute of the PRO candidates is to add radicalism to their assembly. Since Facundo Manes took off from Buenos Aires and showed his desire to compete at the national level, the UCR was decimated. But there are faces. To Maximiliano Abad, recently re-elected president of the Province Committee, the teams of Santilli and Ritondo see it as a possible running mate. Another of the battles in which they will soon cross paths.
THE ORIGIN. As part of an agreement between Mauricio Macri and the Buenos Aires PJ at that time led by Miguel Ángel Toma, Ritondo and Santilli, two leaders in their thirties, landed in the PRO and in the yellow ticket that he lost in 2003 against Aníbal Ibarra in the City of Buenos Aires. It was a stormy arrival: the agreement reached by the leaders of both spaces was not respected and they ended up in the electoral Justice. Everything was only solved when they faced each other in the house of Enrique “Coti” Nosiglia, who acted as a referee so that there would be peace.
Each of the Peronists was opening a different path: Santilli under the wing of Larreta, and Ritondo with Vidal. Today, the deputies come across a new challenge.
“Unity is possible”, Ritondo approached positions in his presentation in Pinamar. The problem is that no one wants to get off. The “hawk” believes that he has collected enough endorsements, and Santilli believes that he earned the right after the legislative election that consecrated him in 2021.
It is that the speech that prevails in the PRO is the one that Macri downloaded with his book “For what”. That is to say: the ideas are more important than the interpreters. But behind that statement, the fight to get the candidacy is elbowing. The uncertainty is great: “It is not the same whether there is a STEP or not”, they consider in space. The elimination of the primaries would raise the tension.
For now, each intensifies their weapons trying to avoid the other. But soon the moment of definitions will come. The stakes are high and there is only one space to fill. The fight is assured.
