In the first ring Alberto Fernandez nobody dares to specify the exact moment in which his attitude changed. At what precise minute was he convinced that, with a lot of luck and even more waistline, he could have some chance of continuing his tenancy in the Quinta de Olivos for four more years or, at least, making his weight count in 2023.
It is a mystery that worries the entire ruling party, which follows the president’s unexpected adventures with some surprise and a lot of anger. Now, like a wounded and cornered animal, the President began to give, especially the last quarter of his term, glimpses of authority that have next year’s elections as their goal and the attempt to save the PASO and himself. He is he late albertism that nobody expected and that few asked for.
signals
It is likely that tomorrow, when historians have to narrate the labyrinth that was the Front of All, they will make a special chapter about the Cabinet and the tremors that happened around its conformation. From the very first decision Cristina Kirchner to leave all his armor to Fernández – he barely intervened to prevent Edward of Peter become Minister of Justice and to put the black ball to some politicians he hates.
Going through the famous “officials who do not work”, the arming of the ministries was a thorn in the heart of the ruling party since it began. That is why the decision of the President of appoint three ministers without consulting to its partners – with the aggravating circumstance that this lack of dialogue was widely publicized by Albertism – was much more than a movement of the pen: it was proof that one of the tectonic layers of the government was beginning to move in a strange direction.
This knock on the table happened in the middle of October. Those who maintain frequent dialogue with Alberto say that they saw him, at that time, resigned and angry with the ostracism that reality had imposed on him: the figure of CFK grew in the heat of the Viability trial and the failed attack that he had suffered, and Massa’s did the same through his trips to the heart of the world establishment in the United States and the relative calm that he had managed to impose on the economy. But the forced ministerial change, the diversity of acts of October 17 and the prominence that the possibility of eliminating the PASO gained in the public debate they finished pushing the President into the void.
There is a striking fact here. Alberto ends up deciding to bet on his leadership -something that in the last three years he had not wanted to do to, according to him, “take care of unity”- not of his own free will but because the circumstances left him no other option. The ministers who had territorial positions have already returned to their payments or are about to do so (the last one, as he had advanced NOTICIAS, was George Ferraresi, Minister of Habitat, who returns to Avellaneda, a line that Gabriel Katopodis is expected to follow in a return to San Martín), and Kirchnerism no longer presses to occupy places. It is a double movement that forces him to put together, finally, his own Cabinet: he forces him to put together something similar to the albertismo that he always refused.
It is a reality that also appeared on October 17, the day of the birth of Peronism in which the Frente de Todos was divided in public, with several different acts. The Fiction of Unityat another time the motto that kept the ruling party stuck with stickers despite the letters and the crossed reproaches, has already disappeared: like someone who pulls off an annoying band-aid, for Peronism to show itself separated ceased to be a taboo.
And on this is mounted the issue that, Alberto thinks, may be his last chance to maintain his weight in the face of 2023. An interesting tactical calculation is hidden in his closed defense of the mandatory primaries. Far from the image that an important part of the ruling party and society has of him -and which was re-established with the bizarre episode of his recent encounter with a Big Brother participant-, Fernández displays certain political skill when it comes to sustaining the PASO.
In praising that tool (“a great instrument that Cristina created”) and the vice president (“a superlative leader who could easily compete in the primaries”), there is a trap, a bear hug, of which she is perfectly aware: she , who quadruples in intention to vote than any other member of the ruling party, does not want to be a candidate -as she did not want to be in 2019- and, even if she changes her mind, she has the ghost of Justice on her back encouraging her to go for the much safer position of senator from Buenos Aires. That is the most intimate place of presidential reasoning: played for played, he does not have much to lose, unlike CFK who could put his or his family’s freedom at stake, or Sergio Massa, the Minister of Economy who came to the 2019 elections with a flow of votes of its own.
labyrinths
Fernández, an old school politician, is a regular consumer of newspapers, portals and also surveys. The reality that the latter give him leaves no room for doubt: his approval numbers are very low and, except for an economic miracle that manages to stop inflation in time, they will not rise before the elections. But -and hence his defense of the PASO- he knows that the fate of the other presidential candidates of the Front of All is very similar: Massa drags a historical negative image -in the environment of the tigrense it is the fluctuations in their disapproval numbers that are studied in more detail-, and the rest (such as the outgoing chief of staff, Juan Luis Manzur) have a high level of ignorance and an equal image of bad
There is indeed a weak point in the presidential reasoning. It’s because he knows that the only way he -and the Frente de Todos- have of managing to get to the elections with the slightest chance is for the economy to get back on track, and for inflation to stop rising at such an accelerated rate. There is the crossroads: If the situation of the workers’ pockets improves, it will be very difficult for Sergio Massa not to capitalize on this success. That is, at least, what would indicate the political logic, which these days is conspicuous by its absence.
That feeling is what haunted the Tigrense ministry these days. There it was expected to celebrate the approval of the 2023 Budget for which Massa personally worked (in what was also a Late vendetta directed at Martín Guzmán, which failed to pass that same law last year). But the joy did not last a day: at 10:20 in the morning, less than five hours after the Deputies gave the project half a sanction -with Massa supporting from the premises-, the vice president launched a withering tweet about the increase of the prepayments that the Government authorized. Although it is an issue that CFK has been following since the government began -two years ago she put forward the idea of launching a comprehensive reform of the health system-, and that the dart was not necessarily aimed at the minister, the timing it used stirred up the spirits of massism. In those corners, the patience to tolerate the differences between the presidential binomial is starting to narrow.
On Massa weighs, in addition, another ghost. He is the one spinning Alberto himself. The President tells whoever wants to listen that he, who is “a political militant of Peronism,” is going to be where the space needs him most, and that if necessary he will step aside to support another candidate. Lease, Massa himself, with whom he insinuates that he already had a conversation on the subject. Yes Alberto makes this statement with the studied wickedness of giving the tigrense a bear hug -to later present him as “his” candidate and remain as the great voter, as Mauricio Macri aspires to do on the other side of the crack- or if it is a move born of intellectual honesty is a mystery.
What is clear is that this idea reached the ears of the always suspicious Massa. Those who know the minister say that from here starts the operation that the Tigrense had already been carrying out and that he has now accelerated. If when he came to office the husband of Malena Galmarini He said under his breath that just after next year he would sit down to talk about candidacies, now the new story became that he “thinks about leaving politics” after 2023 and that “His family doesn’t want him to be a candidate”. Here again the library is shared: his inner circle swears that this new discourse is real and that the last few years have taken its toll on him, while the second ring laughs at these statements and assures that it is one more move by the skillful Massa, who wants stay as far away from this debate as possible. It is a mystery that will be solved only a year from now.
Future
All these speculations, however, go through the bulk of the ruling party, more concerned with taking care of their fifth (see box) than with the possibility of a victory in 2023. Kirchnerism already gave that election for lost -a 2015 revival- is vox populi within the Government, and doubts remain about the prognosis that Alberto makes in his privacy.
Do you want to be a candidate because you think you can be re-elected or, even if you lose in the second round, it would be a political victory for you? It must be taken into account that if Fernández won that internship it would mean the end, once and for all, of the ties that he had with Kirchnerism. It is clear that CFK would sweep a STEP against him, but the scenario is much more hazy if the one competing against the President is De Pedro or Axel Kicillof.
Winning that election and then losing in the general, for a weakened and questioned Alberto, would be the guarantee of at least continuing to weigh in on Argentine politics for the next cycle. In case of Macri, defeated with 41%, is enough proof. All are the dilemmas that occur within an ruling party that has all its candidates on the downside. Perhaps Alberto hopes to show that, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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