the routine of Ricardo Lopez Murphy in Pinamar it is simple. He gets up in the middle of the morning, walks the block that separates him from the Cocodrilo spa and, as fast as he can, jumps into the sea. He swims for an hour and, in the afternoon and after a nap, another one. Swimming -a sport in which he even competed in his younger years- is one of his passions. The other is politics, a field in which he stood out last year when he presented himself as a candidate for Buenos Aires deputy within the internal Cambiemos party and became one of the revelations of the election. In fact, the new legislator has a particular way of measuring how much his figure has grown. “There is a place of refuge for bulldogs that became so popular, during my campaign, that he was able to locate all his dogs,” he says, by the historic nickname that accompanied him throughout his career, which now finds him within the great opposition coalition. “It is that now there are the hawks, the pigeons and also the canine species.”
Ricardo Lopez Murphy: In Cambiemos we are missing three things. Clear rules of the game, which is where we have more problems and we are weaker, the narrative needs to be clarified, the human being needs narratives to explain himself and a collective phenomenon, the program needs to be clear. If we resolve that, we are not only going to win the elections, but we are going to create a great government, regardless of who ends up leading it. But above all, it is necessary to institutionalize the space. If someone can explain to me how decisions are made in the coalition, it would be a miracle. Who elected the national table? What are the rules? What is the statute?
News: Milei’s space accuses you of being a “collector” for Larreta to prevent the escape of the liberal vote.
Lopez Murphy: I could answer that harshly but I’m not going to. I think that if I have something, it is an old history in politics, and the decisions I made were to defeat Kirchnerism and to recognize that in the past there were many mistakes that do not have to be repeated.
News: You joined a space that was government until recently, a government of which you were very critical. How is that adaptation?
Lopez Murphy: I was very critical. One of the clauses when I joined is that I have narrative freedom, I am not responsible for something that I was very critical of, neither in the City nor in the Nation. The coalition is forward.
News: Aren’t you afraid of being associated with macrismo?
Lopez Murphy: I think that if I have something, it is that my communication is very transparent. If you are consistent and tell the truth, you are consistent.
News: His figure grew in the last elections. Do you notice?
Lopez Murphy: I think there are circumstances where a person says more or less the same thing many years ago but suddenly becomes amazingly popular. I admit that this happened to me, it changed a lot. It is the same opinion but now it finds receptive ears.
News: In a tweet you spoke of this government as authoritarian. It’s not much?
Lopez Murphy: It has very noticeable features. It would never occur to me to violate the quorum rules, for example.
News: But is that enough to call this government an “authoritarian regime”? I say this bearing in mind what authoritarian regimes meant in the past in Argentina.
Lopez Murphy: It is one that does not conform to the customs and methods of our constitutional system. In this regime, the notorious amount of DNU is noted.
The only way to banish this authoritarian regime is with the unity of the opposition. That’s why I joined Together for Change. It is time to think about the program and the narrative for when it is time to govern in 2023. There is no place for interns. The only enemy is the K.
– Ricardo López Murphy (@rlopezmurphy) December 6, 2021
News: Is Alberto an authoritarian president?
Lopez Murphy: I use the DNUs excessively, having both Chambers working. Also that attitude of ignoring the rules and regulations has happened very often. In what rule is it that members of the government are vaccinated before? Where is it that they can have parties while the country is in lockdown? That generates an unequal regime before the law, of privilege.
News: But it must be difficult to dialogue in the House with someone who calls you an “enemy.”
Lopez Murphy: It is true that antagonism feeds on itself, but I am not prone to feeding on that.
News: But if it was a tweet of his!
Lopez Murphy: It is true, in the heat of the conflict it is a heavy expression and I recognize it, I do not believe myself without sins and without errors. Perhaps I used bawdy expressions.
News: Twenty years have passed since the outbreak of 2001. You were part of that government. What memory do you have?
Lopez Murphy: It was a tremendously difficult circumstance, with a number of external crises that required a different political leadership than the one we had. It was the most challenging hour of my life: I was encouraged to assume a position in an adverse circumstance, in what I think was an act of extreme patriotism, by assuming and encouraging myself to face the problem.
News: Don’t you regret your time at the Ministry of Economy?
Lopez Murphy: If I did something right in my life, it was to encourage me to that episode.
News: Two years after that he almost reached the presidency. Think about what that would have been like?
Lopez Murphy: We would have had an extraordinary success as a Nation. We would have flown, and he would have had a better presidency than Nestor’s.
