It is not that the internal ones are exclusive to the PRO. In the midst of a deep crisis, there are many political parties that have difficulties in promoting a candidate. In fact, the crisis of violence in Jujuy made them come together in unanimous support for Gerardo Morales and left an important photo. But the yellow space has its singularities: It goes from the polarization and extremist discourse proposed by Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich to the political openness and dialogue proposed by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. The lack of identity makes them seem, at times, two different political spaces. And it forces Together for Change to dance to the rhythm they propose.
In it macrismo accuse Larreta that, in his desperation to gather votes, he would be able to associate with anyone. “They are friends of Massa”, shot Bullrich. And he added: “They are discussing a model that is the same as that stated by the Minister of Economy.” In the larretismo they put as an example of success what was achieved by Claudio Poggi in San Luis, who obtained the support of different sectors to prevail against the ruling party. AND they accuse the former president of wanting to associate only with Milei and the extreme right: “I would be more comfortable with him as an ally than with us”, they provoke him.
In Larreta’s corner they also raise a curiosity. “Horacio looks more like the Macri of 2015 than Mauricio himself,” they warn. What they seek to clarify is that the one who changed, deep down, was not the head of government but the former president. He once again radicalized his speech: the relapse or “involution” of which Durán Barba speaks.
For Larretismo, what failed when they were in government was that the PRO locked itself in its own labyrinth and remained isolated. Each decision cost him too much. That is why they want to broaden the coalition and generate consensus beforehand. The unfinished alliance with Juan Schiaretti went in that direction.
“In the same vein that he wanted to add Schiaretti, there were also conversations with Omar Perotti in Santa Fe,” Bullrich said on television. But Larreta’s environment denies it: “We want to expand the base but it doesn’t give us the same thing. That is an invention of Patricia’s to make the field muddy.
For its part, Bullrich’s plan, which Macri supports, is to do the opposite at the beginning of the 2015 administration: the reforms are carried out from the outset or they will not be able to be carried out, they maintain. The adjustment must be drastic, they add. There is no room for caution.
Macri said it in a talk with businessmen, in April in La Rural: “There are more and more people who are getting angry and who believe that everything must be blown up,” he said. And he added: “I believe that almost everything should be dynamited.”
A yellow leader brings back the memory of a former official who moved away from politics, former Chief of Staff Marcos Peña. He says that he was in charge of moderating the image of the then president, and that he seemed more anti-crack than he really was. Whoever was Macri’s right hand withdrew, but if he wanted to return today he would have no place among the hawks.
There are several former officials of that cabinet who feel far away: “If they propose to me to be a minister of a right-wing, conservative and reactionary government, as I think the government of Bullrich, I would not accept”, says one of the protagonists of that 2015 management.
“Mauricio is only worried about destroying Horacio. Even knowing that this puts the space he created in maximum tension ”, they analyze at the Buenos Aires headquarters on Uspallata street. AND associate the figure of Macri with that of Alberto Fernández, that today obstructs the electoral assembly of the Frente de Todos: “They are doing the same. They are not interested in building anything, only breaking”, they denounce.
What Larreta and his collaborators see in Macri is resentment: The former president does not want the porteño to displace him as space leaderand that’s why he makes life impossible for him. “He has it sworn,” they say.
A couple of years after completing two decades of existence, the PRO is undergoing a deep debate. The lack of definition of its leaders takes away its identity. “It is that decisions are made that are not based on politics but on the spirit of our leaders,” protests an important yellow ship owner. And he adds: “There are things here that can only be explained from the psychological level.”
That’s why on one side and on the other accused of “treason”. The macrismo say that Larreta does not recognize the place of the former president and that he makes decisions without consultation. In Uspallata they protest the interference of whom he had promised to be impartial. The relationship between the main PRO leaders is broken and many consider that there is no going back.
Beyond bombastic statements, in the tranquility of the off, from both corners agree that the numbers show parity. “Technical tie”, say one and the other, despite what they later proclaim publicly.
A consultant to which Kirchnerism pays a lot of attention produced information that would benefit Larreta at the last moment. The work of Analogías indicates that there is still a high percentage of undecided who, today, present an open scenario. “The angry sediment will not go to the extreme right because they are not reactionary citizens,” wrote Mariana Acosta, communication director of that pollster. There, in the center, is where the head of government tries to fish.
The question that nobody dares to answer is what will happen to the PRO after the STEP. From no corner is planned to break: “Whoever gets off loses and will have to pay the political cost”They discuss in private. But in public they accuse each other of wanting to force a break. The power struggle is fierce.
allied fury
A radical setter observes what happens in the PRO and details: “Their fights would be an anecdote for us if they didn’t cause coexistence problems.” It is that the yellow space transferred its indefinitions to the rest of Together for Change. In fact, Gerardo Morales was encouraged to quantify the damage: “Because we were locked in the inmate between Horacio and Patricia, we lost ten points,” he said.
There are several leaders of the UCR who accuse Macri, Bullrich and Larreta of being the architects of the exponential growth of La Libertad Avanza. “If they had not spent the last year fighting, there would have been no place for Javier Milei to appear,” protests an important consultant for the coalition.
True to his style Elisa Carrió was the most forceful with her statements. “Macri is playing to lose Together for Change,” she said. “I accompanied him to form a center space. Today he has come to Milei,” she added.
Consulted by NEWS, the co-founder of the opposition space elaborates: “Maybe Mauricio has lost his identity. Two thirds of Together for Change maintain it”. And he adds: “Macri wants such a brutal adjustment that I am not willing to do. And do you know why? Because the entire Argentine middle class is going to fall. He who did not live in the middle class does not know what he is. And he was born rich.”
Carrió denies Macri’s favoritism for Bullrich and his resentment against Larreta. “If you are the leader of a party, you support all your candidates. If you can’t reconcile your party, you split it ”, he analyzes before this chronicler. And he completes: “I have seen former presidents divide their space because if they don’t win they don’t want the others to win. I am against that because I was very generous with Mauricio”.
Given the lack of dialogue between Macri and Larreta, from outside they began to build bridges so that the spirits of the PRO calm down. Miguel Ángel Pichetto did it openly: “Mauricio has to reestablish the link with the head of government,” requested the Peronist leader who accompanied the former president in the 2019 formula and who today is closer to the mayor of Buenos Aires. He then completed: “That is the path of a man who was very important and who can continue to be as a counselor.” For now, the message is not well received.
There is hardly a match on one side and the other of the PRO. In both corners they admit that, if they had been ordered all this time, there would be no doubt that they would return to the Casa Rosada on December 10. The problem is that they accuse each other of being responsible for the internal crisis. And that nobody wants to give up.
Durán barba / “Macri had a regression”
He believed that Mauricio Macri could be president even when many in the PRO questioned that possibility. He worked from the beginning to create a more moderate candidate with a chance at the polls, but today he looks at the former president from afar. From his new role as advisor to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the Ecuadorian consultant Jaime Durán Barba comments: “Mauricio had an ideological involution to the original Macri. In 2015 he had a progressive element without which he would not have won.”
“When the numbers don’t work for a possible candidate, he gets very angry with his fellow party members who have better chances,” Durán Barba analyzed in Modo Fontevecchia. And he completed: “Mauricio thought he had already won a few months ago. He had a bit of a pedantic attitude when he launched his book ‘What for’”.
Durán Barba was an essential protagonist in Macri’s political life. Not only ideologically, but also in his image. He was responsible for removing his police mustache and sending him to the speech therapist to improve his “cheta” diction. He made him dance surrounded by balloons and transformed his wife and his daughter Antonia into public figures. He humanized it.
At the end of 2015, NOTICIAS chose the Ecuadorian guru as the person of the year and revealed: “The Macri that Durán Barba knew a decade ago took a few steps back, fearful, when an anonymous voter confronted him in the street. ‘A sequel to the kidnapping he suffered,’ concluded the guru after analyzing that unsympathetic tic ”. The consultant worked hard to create the politician who would become president.
Today, he denies the fierceness with which Macri, Larreta and Patricia Bullrich debate. And also of the possible alliances that some venture with the extreme right: “The PRO was a new, progressive force, that appeared as a modern alternative to an aging populism”, he wrote in his last column in Perfil. And he completed: “The unfortunate statements of some members of Together for Change raised the ghost that it is a gorilla group of some neighborhoods of the City of Buenos Aires. With the ideological involution also came an attitude of contempt towards the allies of Cambiemos and the idea of a fierce confrontation with the Peronists”.
Because of that series of mistakes and that identity crisis, Durán Barba believes that the extreme has been reached for Together for Change to jeopardize victory in the upcoming elections. For the Ecuadorian guru, associating with the right reduces their opportunities. “A Macri like the one in 2023 would never have reached the City or the national government,” he concludes.
