diego valenzuela He doesn’t look like a mayor, much less one with power in the suburbs. Not only because until he was 40 years old he devoted himself to journalism, history and writing, but also because he arrives at the interview with NOTICIAS on top of a Yamaha TT-R 230. It is an off-road motorcycle to ride in the sand, the kind used by adolescents in the dunes of Pinamar, but for Valenzuela it is much more than that. “It’s my ground wire. In the municipality I drive with a Zanella”, he says, while insisting on the correct and protected use of the vehicle.
Valenzuela, who has been mayor of Tres de Febrero since 2015, will also need the helmet he wore on the weekend he spent in the coastal city for politics. Since Maria Eugenia Vidal took refuge in the capital, Valenzuela – along with Nestor Grindetti de Lanus and Julio Garro de La Plata– became one of the strong men of Cambiemos in Buenos Aires. From there they promoted – after a fight with Jorge Macri– the landing of Diego Santilli in the Province, and now they pushed, already in an open contest with the former governor, the re-re of the mayors.
News: Vidal called the change “privileges in politics.” Is there a crisis in Cambiemos?
Diego Valenzuela: I think that what we did improved the situation. The door was closed to a trap, perhaps the product of lack of foresight or ingenuity, of what was the original decree, which allowed an inequality to be generated between the mayors who did not take a license and those who did. I do not share María Eugenia’s criticism. Now indefinite reelection is prevented.
News: Are you, Garro and Grindetti empowered now that she is no longer in Buenos Aires?
Valenzuela: Having moved or made the decision Maria Eugenie of working in the City, it is natural that the spaces are filled with those that have political, territorial and electoral legitimacy.
News: Is Larreta your candidate?
Valenzuela: We have been working with Horacio for more than twenty years. He is a guy who goes forward, who has ideas. He is our main reference, and that does not minimize the role of Mauricio or Patricia.
News: At the time you had a good dialogue with Alberto Fernandez How is he now?
Valenzuela: It is a work relationship. I have a previous relationship from when I was a journalist and he was chief of staff. I greeted him for the end of the year, I wished him a good year because he is the President of all.
News: I answer?
Valenzuela: Yes, and he expressed his vocation to continue working so that the Buenos Aires residents of Tres de Febrero are well. And that is my vocation, beyond the fact that on many occasions we have to mark what we do not share.
News: With Kicillof, how is the relationship?
Valenzuela: There is a political praxis that makes it difficult for one to reach understandings. It seems to me that a governor has to see the mayors not as rivals but as his partners. We were often treated like delegates who were downgraded. There’s also like a “we can do it ourselves” thing. Well, the province today is worse.
