Maria Eugenia Vidal She arrives walking to the Hemingway spa, accompanied by her partner, the journalist Enrique Sacco. It is the morning of Sunday 2, the former governor’s last day of rest on the beach, and, with the coastal city exploited by tourists, she prefers to come on foot to avoid the hassle of parking. He also wants to avoid the concentration of people and the occasional greetings, and is located in one of the last umbrellas on the beach. After making sure that the always rebellious “Quique” put on sunscreen, Vidal is She lies on a deck chair and tears off the last half of the book she is reading, “The Silk Fan,” a text by Lisa See that recounts the oppression suffered by women in ancient China. It is a scene, that of the deputy and her boyfriend relaxed on the sand of Cariló, which leads to confusion: more than one might think that the year started off barbaric for the opposition leader, and that her biggest problem today is convincing her boyfriend to take care of his skin from the coastal sun. But, at least in the mud of politics, this is not the case for Vidal: between the defeat he suffered when blocking the change of law on the re-election of the Buenos Aires mayors and the scandalous video where his officials, sitting with spies from the AFI, they asked to put together a Gestapo to “end all the unions”, 2022, until now, does not smile at him. He will have to regain strength on the coast for what will be complex months.
The waves and the wind. But all this cloud seems far from the Vidal beach version. She came to spend the end of the year at Pinamar with his partner, in a postcard that begins to repeat itself: since he left the government it is the third summer that he has gone to rest in the coastal city, where he maintains the ritual of holding a single political meeting, with the mayor local Martín Yeza. The rest of his days on the coast are for relaxation and returning greetings and posing for selfies with voters who approach him.
But this summer she was forced on more than one occasion to cut relaxation. On Saturday the 1st he called Horacio Rodríguez Larreta by phone from Cariló. Those who walk this world say that the relationship with the head of the Buenos Aires government, his historical political partner, would not be going through its best moment. Is that the debate on the law that enabled the current Buenos Aires mayors to stand for another term in 2023 caused a tsunami within the opposition. And although in formal terms Larreta did not support the advance of the PRO members who sought to change the norm, there are several who close to Vidal say that the mayor played his game: he avoided confronting his own mayors who wanted to change the law -such as Julio Garro, from La Plata, Néstor Grindetti, de Lanús, among others – and, behind the scenes, he sent his circle, as was the case of Diego Santilli, to support the initiative. Looking to 2023, Larreta does not want to risk the delicate alliances he has in Buenos Aires.
On the other hand, Vidal played fully to avoid the change, in what was a play that did not prosper. In addition to pushing the senators and deputies of the Province who respond to him to vote against, he published a letter in La Nación where he complained about the “unacceptable privileges”, related the outpost with the historical “barons of the suburbs” and called to say “no” to the measure. It was a text that fell more than heavy among the PRO mayors, who not so long ago responded to him – a fact that was very clear when Vidal confirmed his Buenos Aires candidacy and convinced the Buenos Aires leaders to change the support of Jorge Macri towards Santilli-. Other times.
Labyrinth. However, the conflict that most affected his image is the one revealed by the AFI at the end of last year: a video in which his then Labor Minister, Marcelo Villegas, tells that he would like to have a Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police , to sweep away unionism. The misplaced phrase, above, occurred in the context of a meeting in 2017 between Villegas, two other high officials of the Buenos Aires government, Garro, five construction businessmen and two officials of the intelligence secretariat at that time, who were they had come together to advance the arrest of trade unionist Juan Pablo “Pata” Medina. It is a scandal that the Frente de Todos cunningly pushes, which feeds the specter of lawfare, and which has already reached Justice.
Vidal follows him with concern. While trying to detach herself from Villegas and his terrible sayings, the former governor insists that she never had an idea of that meeting and that she even less encouraged him, which in itself is striking: she would speak of a president who did not know what she was doing. his own people. Another point in debate is the place of the meeting. Vidal’s people assure that it happened in the Buenos Aires offices of Banco Provincia, so the scandal could reach Comodoro Py, the federal court in which they prefer the case to end.
It is a storm of problems for Vidal, but no tourist who has crossed it in Cariló, where he may return some weekend in January, can notice it. On the beach, and with her boyfriend, she seems well away from any trouble.
