The appointment was on Wednesday, March 9, in an apartment on the street Rodriguez Pena to 1600, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta. The Minister of Security of Buenos Aires met for lunch Sergio Berni and the national senator for the UCR Martín Lousteau. The meeting was agreed a few days before in Mendoza. Both crossed paths at the Harvest Festival, where the glasses circulate in all the talks. There, after exchanging greetings and hugs, they said: “We have to get together to eat.” And once back in Buenos Aires they coordinated agendas and organized the meeting. They didn’t want too many witnesses to the encounter. Being part of antagonistic political fronts, they wanted to avoid all kinds of suspicions, but when they said goodbye, around three in the afternoon, at the door of the building where they met, a source from this magazine saw them leave. “In Rodríguez Peña at 1600 Lousteau and Berni, together, have just left a building,” was the brief WhatsApp voice message.
The source is not a person from the political environment, so he did not know much more about the situation, but he is an informed person and the situation alone was enough for him to realize that he was facing an event that deserved to be commented on.
Lousteau and Berni are two figures which, in banking terms, could be defined as “politically exposed”. Both cultivate a high profile and have aspirations for 2023. In the past they shared administration and today they are on opposite political fronts, but they see themselves disputing spaces of power in the next electoral round. That was why they decided to meet. To exchange glances. Are there coincidences between Berni and Lousteau? In principle they are two specialists in different subjects, Berni is specialized in security and Lousteau in economics. Between December 2007 and March 2008, the two shared the Cabinet. Lousteau was Cristina Kirchner’s Economy Minister for four months, and Berni, in those years, worked with Alicia Kirchner at the Ministry of Social Development.
Coincidences. There is a point of view that unites Berni and Lousteau. Both are wayward within their spaces. Berni announced a few weeks ago that he decided to “cut the umbilical cord” with Kirchnerism and Lousteau put together his own bloc within the Chamber of Deputies from friction with the traditional wing of radicalism. At this point, Lousteau has a long way to go that could serve as an experience for Berni. The economist managed to negotiate spaces of power not only within the party or Parliament, but also within the electoral front Together for Change, which would allow him to compete, in principle, for the head of the Buenos Aires Government in 2023.
To Sergio Berni, this question was done uphill. The Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires is asking, emboldened by the polls and the repercussion in the street, a place in the PASO of 2023 to present his own list. A sign of this ambition is that Berni had registered a list to compete in the second electoral section in last year’s legislative elections and from Kirchnerism they asked him to lower it. That in that place they would compete with the unit list. Berni was interested in the section because it included the Zárate party, where he lives.
Berni’s plan is to start the discussion within Peronism itself and get Zárate freed to compete. The minister often boasts that he is the national official with the best image. Currently he has a tense relationship with the local mayor, but also with the national government. He is known for his rhetorical confrontation with the president and the Minister of National Security, Aníbal Fernández. But now he no longer hides his anger with Cristina Kirchner. In an interview, he stated that “the vice president has decided to build with people with whom I do not agree. I participated in that political space with conviction, loyalty and consistency, but she stopped representing me, ”the minister shook.
Future. The Berni-Lousteau summit leaves questions. Is there a possibility of an alliance between them? Both are alarmed by the economic crisis and the problems of insecurity as well. One is very Peronist and the other very radical, but they already knew how to coexist in the same space. Those were other times, but political mutations are the order of the day and perhaps, who says, in the future they will be seen together. This time they tried to make it a secret, but it was not possible.
