Sergio Massa was a privileged witness of the last crossing that Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner had. She was at the Quinta de Olivos, among the select list of guests that did not exceed twenty people, for the President’s birthday. He saw, at noon on Saturday, April 2, how Fernández answered the call from Mariano Cabral, CFK’s private secretary, in which he warned him that his boss was sending him a package with a gift on a motorcycle. Alberto’s anger became unstoppable when he saw that the surprise was “Diary of a Season on the Fifth Floor”, the book by Juan Carlos Torre in which the historian recounts his experiences as part of Raúl Alfonsín’s economic team. The President entered into a whirlwind of loud complaints: that Torre did not have the right to tell intimacies of that government, that he had been part -deputy director of Legal of that Ministry of Economy- and he does not need “anyone to tell him”, and that on top of that Cristina had not even signed it with a dedication. She felt it like a teasewhich was aggravated when a couple of hours later the vice president joked about the issue in public, also in the presence of Massa, in the act that she and the Tigren co-starred in Congress for the anniversary of the Malvinas war.
Although the episode left several reflections -such as the closeness of CFK with Massa, an idea that was deepened when five days later they both got back together for another photo, or the already irreconcilable distance between the running mates-, there is one that went unnoticed: Sergio Tomás Massa was the only one who was at the presidential birthday and then at the CFK event. In fact, from one it went directly to the other.
It is that the Joker is for that. He plays at having one foot on each plate – which also includes photos in public with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and praises exchanged with Gerardo Morales – and shows himself as the political professional who escapes the inmates and who could be, if the circumstances are accommodated , the most drinkable option for the Frente de Todos next year.
flirting. An anecdote reappeared in Peronism since CFK joked with Massa in the act in Congress, where he treated him as “President”, although later he corrected himself and added “of Deputies”. Skilled in rhetoric, the vice president does not usually talk for the sake of talking.
The one who tells the story is a member of the Renovating Front who had dealings with Nestor and his wife. It is from the days when Massa took office as chief of staff, after Alberto Fernández slammed the door. Néstor, then a deputy, seated the brand new official in Rivadavia’s chair, the place he aspires to occupy since he can remember. “You are going to arrive, Sergio,” Kirchner told him. “You are going to arrive because you are a son of a bitch, because you have ambition and because you have friends with money”. Was the penguin prophecy prescient?
This question -if Massa can be for Cristina what Alberto was in 2019- nested these days in many in the red circle. Those who asked him directly were in for a surprise. “I’m not thinking about that at all. It would not be serious at this difficult time in the country to talk about it, ”he replied to the curious. At the insistence, like someone who wants to calm the beasts, the president of the Chamber admits that he wants to be a candidate, the dream that he postponed in 2019 by joining the FDT, but in 2027. “If Alberto goes wrong, things go wrong for us everyone”, is another reflection that can be heard in his bunker.
Government. Close to Massa they say that they see him “more mature”, more leisurely, less in a hurry to reach the finish line. An anecdote illustrates the idea: when the man from Tigre accepted the proposal to join the Frente de Todos, it was stipulated in that agreement that a portfolio from the Buenos Aires cabinet would go to the Frente Renovador. However, when Axel Kicillof took office, he refused to distribute the team’s assembly to him, an idea that he only released after the defeat in the PASO and the direct intervention of CFK. Jorge D’Onofrio, a history of Tigrense, only took office on January 6, 2022, more than two years after the agreement. “At another time Sergio would have operated on Axel, he would have discussed it in public, he would have killed himself with him. At one time we had to take out his cell phone when he was careless to erase his contacts of journalists to whom he leaked information. Now he is zen, mentalized in moving the country and the Government forward, ”they say in his environment.
His new profile is also valid for silently celebrating the victories: at the end of February an economist of his kidney, Matías Tombolini, took over as the new president of Arsat, an unexpected decision that surprised everyone in the Chief of Staff, the area in which depends on the telecommunications company that manages a succulent portfolio. It is a silent advance on the Government -there is also Malena Galmarini in Aysa, her brother Sebastián as director of Banco Provincia, Alexis Guerrera in the Ministry of Transport, to name a few-, but it might not end there.
When Massa’s strategist, the Catalan Antoní Gutiérrez Rubí, asks in his surveys about his client, the answers are convincing: 60% of those consulted say that they want the Tigrense “to have more prominence in the decision-making of this Government”. The strategist, who was the brain of the Frente de Todos campaign after the PASO, also carefully follows the increase in the positive image and a slow fall in the negative of Massa. These are the best numbers he has had since he began working with him in 2018, a growth that began in the middle of last year but increased after the agreement with the IMF was approved. This is a titanic task: perhaps what Macri had the most success with during his administration was attaching the nickname “Ventajita” to Massa, a stigma that makes it very difficult for him to lower his negative image. “They call me ‘Ventajita’ because they are afraid of me”, is his defense against that accusation, as he told this magazine some time ago.
But what the polls say adds a political reality. “It is difficult to associate Sergio with a specific act of management. We sit him in the front row at each act of a minister or a secretary of ours, but those things happen and are not noticed. In the Legislative, its importance is lost a little, ”says a man from his kidney. From this follows a rumor that has been going around since the PASO crisis: the idea of commanding a superministry that, according to versions, ranges from a portfolio that includes Economy and Production to another that also includes Labor and Tourism.
At the end of last year, several of his team had everything ready to move to La Rosada -it is not a sine qua non condition that it be Massa himself who joins the Cabinet, but rather that it could be one of his own-, but the move was ironed In the corridors of the Government House they say that it was due to a direct intervention by Alberto, who distrusted the landing of massism in the Cabinet. At that time, when the President was still in dialogue with CFK and his son, he could afford to say no. Today Massa is the only real bridge between all the tribes of the Front. Now, when there is talk of a Cabinet change after Easter, it does not seem to be a time for puritanism.
Front. “No one understood Cristina’s move with Sergio. He is not thinking about 2023, for which a life is missing: he is thinking about today, She is worried”, says an official in dialogue with the vice, who says that we must pay attention to the book that CFK gave Alberto: that text tells the story of a government that agreed with the IMF and had to deliver the mandate first. The words of Máximo Kirchner, on April 7 in Merlo, are also added. “You don’t have to crowd for the sake of crowding. That’s what happened in 2001,” said the field leader.
A close collaborator of Massa, from the economic team, also kept this idea when he attended the former president at the end of March. She called him to bounce ideas about the economy, and he had a terminal diagnosis. “This ends badly,” he told her. The man was surprised by the call -he is not one of those who have daily dialogue with Cristina-, although the pieces were only settled a few days later, when she began to appear with Massa in the acts. “She wants to keep it handy and test it out just in case,” she says. According to this line of interpretation -to which is added a dialogue between the journalist Horacio Verbitsky and a close collaborator of CFK who told him that the Government “goes through the air in a month”-, the vice president suspects that the program imposed the Fund will lead to an economic crisis so serious that it will end up forcing Alberto to resign. Hence the idea that she “is thinking about today”: Massa is fourth in line to succession.
However, in the approach with CFK there is a problem. “Sergio can fix the top with the dome and everything is perfect, but below there are a thousand quilombos”, says one of the priests of the Renovating Front. At the end of March this was noted at a congress of the Buenos Aires branch in Las Heras, a town commanded by Javier Osuna, from the FR, who was the owner of Aubasa -the state company that manages the concession of routes in the Province- until the end of 2021 , when he got tired of the friction with Kicillof and returned to his previous position. In that meeting, harsh criticism was heard towards the national management, towards what was the distribution of lists in the legislative elections, and concern was also raised about the future of the Renovating Front: like CFK, Massa is among those who contributed their own votes in the 2019 and therefore you risk losing them. From that conclave, which later the massist minions tried to tone down the criticism, a conclusion emerged: by 2023 there must be candidates from the RF in each council, each administration and also in each province. Will that idea also be valid for national elections? Perhaps that was a question that came to Massa, because the national congress of the Front, which was scheduled for the end of April, was canceled until further notice. It is not necessary to tense for others, it would seem to be the conclusion.
Fifty. On April 28, Massa will celebrate his half century of life with an austere family celebration, a barbecue at his home in Tigre. The years that he is, by the standard of his guild, are few: it is what he considers himself a young politician.
In “In Praise of Slowness”, a book by Canadian journalist Carl Honoré that Gutiérrez Rubí gave him, there is a phrase that he must have liked: “We constantly travel in the fast lane, charged with adrenaline, and that means that we never have the time and tranquility that we need to reflect and ask ourselves what is really important”. The Catalan adds to that line, as he wrote in his recently published book, “Democratic Fatigue”, a reflection of his own. “In life this is recommended, in politics it is essential.” Massa says that today this is the best option. Slow but safe. Overall the Joker can play in any hand.
Opposition. Sergio Massa and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta have not only shared a deep friendship for three decades. Both also boasted, in private, that it was virtually impossible to find a photo of them together: despite the relationship between the two, they managed to escape the cameras when they were together. Politicians with a waist, they know that this image could bother several of their ranks.
That premise, however, was extinguished on the night of March 30. At the annual event of Conciencia, a social work NGO, the flashes found them together and the images went viral. Gone is the hard cross they had due to the date of the agreement with the Fund. “Sergio, for me the most comfortable thing would be for our deputies to abstain,” said the head of the Buenos Aires government to his friend. This cut him short: “Surely for you it would be the most comfortable, but not the best for the country”. That vote, with 202 votes in favor, was experienced by massismo as a great victory.
In the Renovating Front they say that this vote is also proof that Massa has bridges even with the opposition. The proof is Gerardo Morales, who became governor in 2015 with an alliance with Tigrense. That tune still holds.
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