The telephone communication is part of a file that investigates drug trafficking and was made public at a hearing. A prisoner from the Piñero prison speaks with another member of his gang about the electoral expectations of 2023: “By January, around there, the Government is already changing. If Bullrich or Pullaro don’t win, because if one of those two wins, you know what… See you ‘Nemo’! “, he says. One of his bets is still in play, the other has already gone wrong: on Sunday the 10th, the 48-year-old radical leader swept the elections for governor of Santa Fe. Now he has one goal ahead of him and he is willing to do anything: fight against the drug gangs
Maximiliano Pullaro He was Minister of Security in the government of Miguel Lifschitz and he had to live with threats from organized gangs that continued even when he had left the ministry. He started his campaign two years ago, comfortably beating Carolina Losada and in the general elections he became the most voted gubernatorial candidate in the history of Santa Fe, exceeding one million voters. A man from Hughes, a town in the interior of Santa Fe, a former pizza delivery man and amateur boxer, who says he has prepared his entire life for this moment: facing the drug mafia. The result will begin to be seen from December.
Changes.
With a majority in both chambers, Pullaro is going to present the drug dealing bill, one of his campaign flags, on the first day of government. His quest will be to create a specialized structure of prosecutors and a local police force to carry out tasks of persecuting the marketing of small doses of drugs.
“The province has drug dealing problems with very high rates of violence. We have to have tools to go against that,” the governor-elect explains to NOTICIAS. Days after the elections, Pullaro evaluates possibilities with his Security team: they study creating a unit within the already existing body, but they also look closely at the experience of Córdoba, which has a specialized police force.
They are also considering option B, if they achieve legislative consensus. “I am still a provincial deputy. Therefore, if we get majorities during the transition, I will present the projects now and I arrived at December 10 with the laws approved,” he becomes emboldened.
“You have to hit hard and fast,” Pullaro asked his team. For that, he will complete the plan taking all the police out onto the streets from the first day of administration and will try to control the prisonsthe place from which much of organized crime originates.
The governor-elect is convinced that he will reverse the local stigma. As a minister he tried and suffered threats of all kinds: He had to travel in an armored car, although he never used the bulletproof vest they had provided him.. “It was very uncomfortable,” she says. His family also suffered because of his work: at a hearing, a criminal told how the kidnapping of one of his children had been planned. Ultimately the plan was not executed.
“I already put them in prison once, I’m going to do it again,” the governor-elect repeated during the campaign to discourage what his internal rival, Carolina Losada, was saying, who attributed him to some collusion with drug trafficking. That maneuver hurt more in the coalition of Unidos para Cambiar Santa Fe (the seal that represented Together for Change in that province) than the criticism of Peronism. From that point on, his relationship with the senator became resentful, despite the fact that he publicly says that “everything is forgotten.”
While preparing for management, Pullaro campaigns for Bullrich. “We are going to govern with whoever it is,” he warns, but assures that, for his plans, “a Kirchnerist government would be the worst scenario.” The result motivates him: “Our election is going to have an impact on the national order,” he concludes.
The PJ of Santa Fe and a historic defeat.
The bunker of Marcelo Lewandowski, the PJ candidate, looked almost empty on Sunday the 10th. Neither Governor Omar Perotti nor the other leaders approached the space they had set up in Rosario. Each one waited for the meager results of the election in a different place: postcards of what is happening with Peronism in Santa Fe.
“We have to rebuild from scratch,” he analyzes after the crushing defeat and with strong self-criticism the president of Justicialism, Ricardo Olivera. For the local leader, the strategy was wrong from the beginning. “We launched candidates who dropped out and two hours before the closing of lists Lewandowski had to grab him. At that point Pullaro had already circled the province five times,” he protests. In addition to losing the governorship, the PJ bloc will be a minority in the Deputies and the Senate, something that has not happened since the ’80s. A historic defeat.
