“You have to understand that with Cristina it is not enough and without her, it is not possible”. Alberto Fernández said it in February 2018, when he met with the current Vice President to overcome his differences with him at the time. The same phrase is now paraphrased by some leaders of Together for Change to refer to the dilemma they are going through: “With Mauricio, it is not enough and without him, it is not possible”.
Even with the internal debate generated by his government, particularly due to his dismal economic results, the figure of Mauricio Macri remains more than relevant in the opposition coalition. And last week he played an active role in the negotiations to agree on the text of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His hardening resulted in the project approved by the Chamber of Deputies, which contemplated the changes they wanted in Together for Change.
“Do what you have to do, but let’s avoid default,” the former president told a group of leaders who visited him last weekend. Even so, he was the one who most resisted, along with Patricia Bullrich, to advance the project of the Executive Power that included in one of its articles the economic measures that are going to be applied and that JxC refused to sign. If the UCR and the Civic Coalition endorsed that proposal, the “hawks” were willing to vote against it on the floor.
That possibility served to resume discussions, both internal and those held with Sergio Massa, the president of the Chamber of Deputies. The political needs of Alberto Fernández, in the midst of the Kirchnerist resistance to voting for the agreement, made the ruling party accept the proposals of Together for Change. Thus, the draft of an article was reached that only authorized the Government to renegotiate the debt, but that was even much more in tune with what the opposition was asking for. For example, in the aggregate that mentions “the cancellation of the maturities of the stand-by agreement duly executed in 2018and the strengthening of international reserves”. mischievously, A JxC referent interpreted that this allusion “liquidates” the criminal case against Macri and his officials for the indebtedness.
However, there are some leaders of the UCR and the Civic Coalition who, privately, attribute to Macri having hindered the agreement with last-minute demands that complicated the negotiations that were held in Congress.
For some reason, after the sanction of the agreement with the Fund, the president of radicalism, Gerardo Morales, decided to exclude the PRO from his thanks in a publication he made on Twitter: “I want to highlight the great institutional responsibility of Together for Change looking for the consensus to avoid default in Argentina. I congratulate in particular the block of deputies from the UCR, the Civic Coalition and the Republican Peronism for their commitment from the beginning”.
Some believe that what Elisa Carrió wrote on social networks had the same meaning: “I congratulate the entire Civic Coalition for having carried out the strategy to avoid default. Privilege the interests of Argentina over speculative and personal interests”.Was he referring to “hawks” when he spoke of “speculative and personal interests”?
Close to Macri, they rule it out outright: they assure that the former president and the founder of the Civic Coalition spoke twice in the middle of the legislative negotiations, although they admit that distrust prevailed with Morales, although they met in a hamburger restaurant in the north to bring their positions closer to the understanding with the IMF. “The radicals and Carrió were willing to vote for what the government wanted. Mauricio and Patricia’s position forced the government to give in,” they say.
After the vote, Macri was magnanimous: during a tour of Expoagro, in San Nicolás, he said that he “congratulated all” the legislators of Together for Change because “they have had a great performance” and concluded: “We have done the right thing”.
In the PRO, however, they reveal that the former president had a different attitude in private: when receiving the legislators of his party to greet them for the political victory of the Deputies, he complained about “the stupidities of some of our partners.”
The centrality of the former president is beyond dispute. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta supported the position of the “hawks”, although he was closer to the position of the “doves”, inclined to sign the agreement in any way to avoid default. There are those who speak of some leaders who moderated their harshness after speaking with the United States embassy.
Macri’s protagonism recreated the eternal doubts about his next steps in politics: will he be a presidential candidate or not? Last December, the former president provided the most specific definition on the subject. “I do not sign up for any race to be president in 2023, ” he told the program “La cornisa” by Luis Majul. Those around him are not so sure that this is the case and they slip that the moment to make a decision will be next March. In 2022 you cannot talk about candidacies, they warn in the macrista environment, but at the beginning of next year, it will be inevitable to do so. And a further deterioration of the Argentine economy, as PRO economists predict, could give the former president more credibility. By itself, according to some pollsters, it is lowering its level of rejection in public opinion.
It is even mentioned that if Macri decided to compete to return to the Casa Rosada, I would ask Bullrich to withdraw from the presidential candidacy and run for governor of Buenos Aires, since, imagine, his cousin Jorge Macri, the current minister of the Buenos Aires Government, could be an excellent candidate for head of Government of the city of Buenos Aires.
In bullrichism they deny that version and attribute it to “an operation of larretismo”. After clarifying that the head of the PRO does not have a domicile in the Province (and five years of domicile in the Buenos Aires district are required to run for governor), they ratify that their leader “will not drop out of the presidential project.” They are even offended by the version: “Why, if Macri shows up to compete in 2023, should Patricia get out of her presidential candidacy and not Rodríguez Larreta?”
“Mauricio is not going to be a candidate for the Presidency,” close associates of Bullrich assure. “Nobody stays so active in politics if they didn’t have aspirations to return to the Presidency,” interprets someone who speaks often with the former president. For an operator of the Buenos Aires government, Macri will not do anything that harms Rodríguez Larreta, such as complicating his chances of reaching the Casa Rosada. And they assure that the link between the two has improved a lot since January, when they coincided in the exclusive country Cumelén, in Villa La Angostura, Neuquén. It transpired that they had only one meeting alone, but, in reality, there were two and there were many more social gatherings and meals with friends that they shared on those vacation days.
In the UCR, enigmatic, they reveal that Macri is putting together work teams for his “second time” in the Government and that he invests resources in the interior to prop up his national armed forces. “Hopefully he will present himself to compete for the Presidency. He is my favourite candidate ”, jokes a prominent radical leader: he says it because he is convinced that the former president will have more chances of losing than winning the PASO against any candidate from Leandro N. Alem’s party.
Nothing is said yet, really. Some also thought in 2015 that, after her electoral defeat, it was impossible for Cristina Kirchner to return to power. It is that recurring crises were always foreseeable in Argentina, but this land will always be prosperous in terms of political surprises.
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