Sergio Massa is tired. Exhausted. In his circle, in truth, they describe him in another way, more colloquial, which refers to a certain part of the body that swells until it gives no more. The truth is that patience has it to the limit. A few days after completing ten months as Minister of Economy, his life turned into a tortuous race against a nuclear bomb that could detonate the precarious reality of Argentina. And, furthermore, he is convinced that he is the only one of all the priests in the Government who takes the situation as seriously as it deserves. This is a feeling that he has kept inside him for a long time, almost since the formation of the front of allbut now, with the noose around his neck, he got tired of hiding.
That is why as soon as he set foot in the country he grabbed the phone. He came from a summit of the Inter-American Bank of Development in Panama, a key meeting with the international organization that is expected to invest around 13 billion dollars in Argentina, and had slept badly on the plane. Despite the fact that he was scheduled to return a day later, he brought his return forward to Monday the 20th in order to monitor the detail of the intervention Edesur. But it was not the only item on the agenda.
The other was to put white on black in his relationship with Alberto Fernandez. “Look, I’m not Guzmán, I’m not going to bank off the record by saying stupid things.” It was a tense talk, in which the minister pointed squarely at a right-hand official of the President, but it was also much more than that. It was the first time, since they were in government, that Massa let his anger with one of the legs of the coalition come to light in the media. It was much more than a fight: it was the sign of a change of era, a sign that the elections are just around the corner, that the Tigrense, despite the statements made in recent months and that inflation does not stop going up, he has plans for his future. And it was also the warning that nothing guarantees that the front of all arrive united until the votes, despite the fact that after the escalation massa and alberto they were shown together in an act in Mendoza. It is the most delicate moment of the Government.
Labyrinth. Massa is in the middle of a perfect storm. To the fragile economic situation that he inherited when he took office, something was added that was not in anyone’s plans and that is much more serious than what is seen with the naked eye: the drought, the worst to hit the country since the second decade of the last century. In Economics they calculate that the lack of water is going to mean a loss of foreign exchange income of between 15 and 20 billion dollars this year, around 20% less than what was imagined for 2023. The reserves in the Central Bank drain day by day day, a reality that has all the officials in this area involved in great concern. The spirits in the Ministry of Economy are gray on the best of days, a complex situation to which are added the constant sparks between the Tigrense and Miguel Pesce, Fernández’s friend that directs the BCRA. And after the drought -that of water and that of dollars- came the inflation number for February, which marked a 6.6% increase in prices.
For all this is that the spirits of Massa they escalated so much: the situation is so fragile that just a breath can make it explode. “No, we’re not dancing on the deck of the Titanic, we are dancing on a surfboard with a hole in it in the middle of a storm”, they admit close to the minister. Hence the anger of the Tigrense with Albertismo was so much.
tensions. The massa fury has first and last name. His name is Antonio Aracre, the former CEO of the multinational Syngenta who joined the Government in February as head of advisors to the President. That had been a striking move -a man who had never done politics in his life and who came from the private world- and who had aroused some anger from Kirchnerism, which ensured that the newly arrived official had a better profile for a Macrista government than for a peronist
According to the Massista story, it was this man, who has an office a few meters from Alberto’s, who spread an extremely delicate rumor in the media: that in Economy an exchange rate unfolding was being planned, which in Creole is a full-fledged devaluation, a measure with a high economic impact but also – with the elections close – political. It was a situation that put the entire ministry on alert, which watched with terror as the media and the red circle echoed this news in recent weeks.
It was precisely this that the Tigrense reproached the President. “We can’t play internship right now,” he told her. Near the minister they are even cruder. “aracre is an idiotHe talks nonsense as if the situation weren’t already very difficult. We are in the middle of the perfect storm and it seems that the only one who realizes this and tries to fix something is Sergio, it seems as if he is the father who takes the boys to school and behind the children in the car they fight they say.
Aracre, consulted by NEWS, did not want to make statements in this regard.
Does it break or bend? But the great novelty was not the fight itself, which could have been one of the many that take place at the highest level of power of any government, but the fact that they let it go. Is that until then Massa postulated himself as the “arbitrator” of the coalition, the “professional” who served as a balance between the tensions of Alberto and Cristina Kirchner and that he did not get into the “intern” because his thing was management and hard work. This was a reality that was also reflected in the surveys carried out by his consultant, the Catalan Antoni Gutiérrez Rubí, which showed that when asked about the favorable aspects of the Tigrense, his features as a conciliator and a politician focused on his work appeared precisely.
A simple explanation for the change in position could be that Massa is one more person, and that, with the noose around his neck due to the difficult course of the economy, he now has less patience than at any other time. Who lives with the maximum tension in his head and now it’s easier to make him angry. It is, in fact, this thesis that is supported by those who have a daily dialogue with him. But another one also looms, more in depth, and more political. It is the one that indicates that, months after the elections, nothing and no one guarantees that the Frente de Todos will arrive united as a coalition. That there is a risk that the army explodes in the air, and that each tribe ends up competing for its own or through a new alliance.
It is an old idea that floats in the heads of both staunch Albertists, of those who asked the President at the time to accept all the resignations of K officials, and of Kirchnerists who can no longer bear even hearing the name of Alberto. These are supported by a certain reality: Axel Kicillof leads all the polls on the Buenos Aires election, a district in which Cristina Kirchner continues to have a large flow of her own votes.
In addition, they already sent signals in that sense. In the middle of last year, in a tactical move to weigh more heavily on the votes in the Senate controlled by the vice president, the Peronist bloc divided in two. One of them, led by Juliana Di Tullio, was renamed Unidad Ciudadana, the same name under which CFK had competed for its own in 2017. Since then the ghost of refloating that space to compete with a purely K list has been around. in the heads of many So much so that, in full escalation between Massa and Alberto, the minister “Wado” De Pedro had to come out and deny the possibility of a rupture within the Front. Everything is fragile in this trench.
Ticket. The delicate nature of the situation became, in the massita manual, a two-sided coin. One is the one that this note has already narrated, the danger of an approaching abyss, and the other is a political conclusion. It is a logic that begins to rotate through the ministry of the Tigrense, and that indicates that “everything is so on the edge” that there is only one possibility that there will not be a currency run or something worse the day after the candidates are announced -the June 24 at the last minute closes the period to register alliances-: that is, nothing more and nothing less, than Sergio Tomás Massa. It’s an interesting twist. Until very recently, the Tigrense swore that not only did he not want to star in a ticket but, above all, his family would not let him. The latter has already changed, or at least started to change. “Sergio would be a great President,” said Malena Galmarini on the morning of Wednesday the 22nd in an interview with Radio Perfil, where in addition to leaving that title, she spent several minutes talking about the attributes that could make her husband a “great” leader. For last, however, she saved a letter. “The issue is that Tomás, our son, doesn’t want to.” Before he didn’t want the whole family, now only the son. We have to see what happens in a few weeks.
However, Massa still has not formalized his intentions, while Alberto resists being ruled out and shows polls to those who are going to see him that show that he is even with respect to other candidates. The lists are still to be closed, but one thing is clear: the foundations of the Frente de Todos are moving.
