Cinthia Fernández closed her campaign dancing tango in front of Congress, in a thong and with garter belt. The video was released on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and in minutes it was the topic on the media. Thus, the dancer closed with no entry into politics and now expects a good result in the PASO on Sunday that will allow her to reach the November legislatures calmer and more hopeful. But how was the list of the Unite party that encabella formed?

The candidate for deputy for the province of Buenos Aires began her journey a few months ago by publishing on the media the image of the ballot with which she would disembark in the National Congress. On her instagram, between stories with boxes of all kinds and photos with her daughters, the panelist from Los Angeles de la Mañana had asked her more than 5 million followers for help to select the image for the list: “This is how the photo was that you chose. Now there is the most important choice. I know that I can do it, I know that with all that I live daily I can help many women and also those men who in their minority suffer the shortcomings of the times of Justice. Up that you can. To drive these people crazy to work once and for all, “he wrote on Instagram.

Cinthia Fernández’s campaign closing hot spot:

Cinthia Fernández heads the list 317. In second place she is accompanied by José Bonacci , who made her the electoral offer and the head of the party “Unite for freedom and dignity” , the space with which Amalia Granata managed to take her first step in the legislature of Santa Fe and who is known in the world of the thread for lending her name to a diverse range of characters.

Since 2020, Cinthia Fernández flirted with her foray into politics and with building a profile similar to that of Granata . In fact, on February 26 she had published on her Instagram account a doctored photo in which she mounted her image together with that of the deputy and Ángel de Brito . In the surroundings of Granata they rejected Fernández’s insistence on “hanging” on her fame. However, Bonacci insisted on bringing the figures closer: “Amalia didn’t want to take the picture with Cinthia and the petisa went crazy. The idea of taking them into politics has the same source, which is me. The offer that was made to Cinthia was the same as that made to Amalia, ”she says.

Unite, the party of Cinthia Fernández

While Cinthia and Bonacci made an effort in recent months to get closer to Granata, the Santa Fe insisted on differentiating themselves. In fact, after taking office, the reference of the celestial universe broke with Unite to build the block “We are life.” “Going with that stamp was a mere electoral utilitarianism of absolute necessity. There is no ideological or political link between Amalia and Unite ”, says her advisor Álvaro Zicarelli .

Fernández’s pre-candidacy and Granata’s anger , somehow, reveal one of the typical aspects of electoral logic that is oversized in times of list closures: small parties that appear to lend their stamp to a candidate and that, in some cases, they end up catapulting them to public office. María Alejandra Perícola , academic director of the Electoral Law Observatory, insists that these mechanisms are part of the rules of the game: “In Argentina today there are 657 federally recognized parties.” According to the expert, the legislation favors the swarming of these spaces since “there is a low level of demand to form and maintain parties.” “What the law does not do is control neither the coherence nor the consistency within those spaces,” she adds.

The defenders of these practices insist that they allow “ordinary people”, such as Amalia or Cinthia, to participate in electoral contests. In fact, this same seal was the one that led José Luis Espert to compete in the 2019 presidential elections. However, the debate has a flip side: these spaces, with no representation, receive public money from the Permanent Party Fund as well as resources for the bells. Gerardo Scherlis, Professor of Law at the UBA and researcher at Conicet, maintains: “In detail, you can never know what benefit these parties obtain. On the one hand, you have public financing and considering that these parties are small, almost personal micro-enterprises, that money is not little. In addition, they have sums for the printing of ballots and in the world of printing companies it is known that apocryphal invoices are generated to justify those expenses. I give an example: in 2017, when the money for printing ballots was increased due to a court ruling, the number of lists that were presented multiplied, ”he says.

Bonacci denies that her political party functions as a kind of personal SME and refers to the balance sheets presented. According to him, Unite is a space that aims to break with the logic of “the gentlemen in politics”: “In 2017 we bet on Amalia and the people followed that common sense. Now we saw that Cinthia was making a lot of common sense proposals in relation to the pandemic, Formosa and the liberation of the prisoners, ”he says.

Bonacci is an expert in electoral twists and turns and although she denies the old politics, she knows how to play with everyone: she was a Rosario councilor in 2001 for Peronism, a candidate for senator in 2011 at the hands of Agustín Rossi, she lent the seal to the macrista Jorge Boasso in 2017, then to Granata and, before playing with Espert, she photographed himself with Alejandro Biondini. Now, her bet is Cinthia Fernández and she is confident: “She has 4 million followers on Social Media , a more important platform than many others. Politicians and pollsters don’t register it, but people do, ”he says. For now, thinking of the panelist as a national deputy still seems far-fetched, but Amalia’s experience gives outsiders hope.