It is often said that governments that have just started have a hundred days of grace, in which the opposition maintains a truce to allow them to disembark in public administration and even so that premature criticism cannot be misinterpreted as coup. But in these modern times, rushed by social media, everything comes forward. A little more than two months after taking office, Javier Milei received the first snub from the main opposition leader: Cristina Kirchner.
The former president, who was maintaining a prudent silence in the face of the Government’s reformist advance, decided to return to the scene with her now classic texts, which in the past were letters and are now presented as “working documents.” This document is called “Argentina in its third debt crisis”.
What is the reason for CFK’s epistolary return? The main thesis circulating among the deputies of The Campora CFK was forced to go out and speak (or write) because on February 8, the journalist Roberto Navarro, owner of El Destape, made an editorial in which he said he knew “what Cristina thinks” about Milei. “Cristina believes that Milei is today the politician who is doing things best in terms of political technique, because he is the one with the most courage, because he is Kirchnerist in his way of acting, that is, he always doubles down and never goes back.” “, and Cristina believes that she finds a leadership, including Peronism, with little courage to face it,” she defined that morning on her streaming channel.
Navarro’s words did not fall well on the former president’s ears and versions began to spread about how she had reached those conclusions. It was speculated that, in a chat with CFK, overinterpreted her words, or that she had reconstructed the former president’s thoughts based on dialogues with leaders close to her, including the owner of a media outlet. On the morning of Wednesday the 14th, when CFK’s letter became known, Navarro gave an explanation of what could have happened. “The time in which she planned to go out to speak was brought forward. I suppose because of how badly his position fell into militancy,” said the journalist and reaffirmed his editorial from the previous week, although making a reservation: “Cristina does not contradict herself in that letter. Before I talked about the forms and now I talk about the substance, which for my taste is the most important thing.” The novel between the leader and her militant journalism promises more chapters.
Internal
In back of CFK’s need to make its position clear criticism of Milei’s management, the future of the opposition is at stake. Today, Peronism and Kirchnerism in the Chamber of Deputies appear homogeneous, but it is in doubt how long it can be sustained over time because, especially in the province of Buenos Aires, an internal conflict is beginning to be woven that could bring blows of unknown magnitudes. Everything accelerated with the resignation of Jorge Ferraresi from the vice presidency of the Patria Institute. The mayor of Avellaneda was one of the leaders of the Ensenada Group, which at the end of 2022 began meeting with other mayors of the Buenos Aires suburbs to promote Cristina’s presidential candidacy, which was later frustrated.
After the electoral defeat of Sergio Massa, this group decided to reorganize behind “the only strong proposal that remained,” according to the mayor of Ensenada, Mario Secco, the day after last year’s runoff, on November 23. He was referring to the governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof. This intention of the Ensenada Group seeks to pressure Cristina to release the internal to a more open discussion and to put Máximo Kirchner’s resignation from the Buenos Aires PJ on the table in order to propose Kicillof. For Cristina it is a complex challenge because of what she represents in each person’s personal assessment of her. She is being forced to choose between her two children: her biological son and her political son.
Kicillof has not yet picked up the glove of this request from the mayors of the Ensenada Group, which also includes its Minister of Community Development, Andrés “el Cuervo” Larroque, former secretary general of La Cámpora. At the end of the day Kicillof will do what Cristina tells him, just as when in 2021 he asked her to open his government to include Martín Insaurralde as Chief of Staff instead of his friend Carlos Bianco. That episode still generates discussions within Buenos Aires Justicialism. Today the groups in the bidding are quite clear: on the one hand there is La Cámpora, with Máximo Kirchner at the helm, to which is added Sergio Massa’s Frente Renovador and a few mayors who still respond to Insaurralde. On the other side is the Ensenada Group, led by Mario Secco and Jorge Ferraresi, and accompanied by Carlos Bianco, who would intend to run as a candidate for mayor in Quilmes, where the camper Mayra Mendoza does not have re-election.
Once again, CFK once again becomes the center that unifies Kirchnerism. If she decides to leave the discussion, leadership and succession are called into question. Without it it breaks, with it it unifies. What will she do? In 2019 she chose Alberto Fernández, and in 2023 she accompanied Massa. Now, the “orga” waits for a signal by 2025.
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