The appeal to the elections signed by Alberto Fernández has lit the bonfire of vanity. But it also offers Mauricio Macri and Cristina de Kirchner the opportunity to put loyalty to the test with their own strength, not the loyalty they receive from below – which is a form of pandering – but the opposite: it is the one due to them from those who lead their followers.
Bottom-up loyalty has an expiration date. The one from above to those from below can beat the clock.
In decree 237/23 he is called to choose – in a two-course menu, PASSO and general – the representatives in the Mercosur parliament. The system, according to the ordinance approved by the National Electoral Chamber in 2015, provides that the presidential formula leads the polls and in second place the candidate for Parlasur of the national constituency (there are 19).
The order continues with candidates for national senators – in the provinces where appropriate -, deputies and legislators of the Mercosur regional district (19 others).
This window opens up an opportunity for the two coalitions compensate for the damage that the decoupling of election dates can cause them in the national legal orderwhich are provincialized in 15 districts.
Party leaders like Macri or Cristina drag votes in the large constituencies, but at the same time in those provinces they have a margin of rejection in the general estimation which has forced them to withdraw from the race. Being ranked second on PASO’s August 22 lists as Parlasur candidates gives them the opportunity to nationalize their campaigns for the August 13 primary and the October 22 general election.
They fight over the votes they already have
On the front of the ruling party and the opposition, a struggle has begun that occupies the top of the formulas. The Frente de Todos aspires to maintain the 30/32% of the votes that, on average, Peronism has in national elections.
Even the opposition of Together for Change hopes to keep the 40/42% it has held since 2015, and growing. Neither force has leaders who can steer the formula with the ability to contain the diversity of the parties that compose them..
Since there is a certainty that they will maintain these percentages at least in the STEP, more candidates are registered every day. Total, the floor already has it.
This absence of unchallenged leadership in the coalitions forced the territorial leaders to bring forward the elections, lest they be overwhelmed by the uncertain fate of the national candidates in their forces.
Citizens live in the provinces and Governors risk their lives in local elections. They seek to maintain identification with their constituents by wielding power usually greater than that of national leaders.
Any governor is stronger than Macri or Cristina, dominates his territory, has a fiscal surplus, can attempt re-election or promote amicable successions and has a more than convincing bargaining power vis-à-vis the local opposition, which among other things lacks the FdT before JxC in the national order. They might be tempted to save the territory and forget the national ones.
A patch for date decoupling
The response of the national fronts will certainly be in the election of pre-candidates to parliamentarians, which give national circulation to leaders who drag votes, even if they are not enough to integrate national formulas.
Going to the polls in all provinces as national district candidates for Parlasur is an asset to save the national effects of decoupling.
Nor is this a wonderful discovery of making a boss appear in a secondary (albeit notable) position to drag identification with voters.
Gerardo Morales, who is out of re-election in Jujuy, leads the list of candidates for conventional constituents this Sunday, a drags votes in favor of Carlos Sadirhis successor in the succession of the governorship.
Parlasur, always a refuge
In 2015, Cristina’s government called Parlasures elections in accordance with a congressional law that Mauricio Macri evaded in 2019 for that year’s elections.
During his tenure Cambiemos’ government jibarized the Argentine representation in that congress which is based in Montevideo, with the credible presumption that the Peronist opposition has turned Parlasur into an offshore base.
Macri did not pay for diets and his party campaigned regionally to get other countries to sign a protocol suspending elections in 2019. They were not elected again that year.
Electoral justice has ordered that they be re-elected this year. AND an opportunity for leaders of intense minorities, Christianity and Macism, to exploit the value they have among their constituents. Without them you can’t get there, with them you can raise the ceiling of preferences.
A small sacrifice to the dome
The emergence of the last stretch of the campaign will decide whether Cristina will agree to do the trick to become another Parlasur. She has already given all she owed, she said.
Montevideo is a destination within easy reach of Buquebús and in exchange for a few per diems. It served the leaders of Peronism as the parking lot of the opposition: Jorge Taiana, Víctor Santamaría, Eduardo Valdés, Agustín Rossi, a whole seedling who waited for 2019 to take over the Fernández government.
In 2015, there was speculation that Cristina could run for Parlasur in search of questioned privileges. The need to cling to Peronism in Buenos Aires, its district, this time may require an anabolic.
It is she who leads the group of commentators who predict a defeat for Peronism in the national teams. The government of Buenos Aires is worth keeping.
Macri can perform the same function as a candidate for Parlasur, even if he is unlikely to resign a future of fame and money, such as a presidency at the FIFA Foundation, a return to the Boca board of directors, or a possible candidacy to succeed Gianni Infantino, as president of FIFA, to take the ferry to Uruguay, a country he knows well.
angry with their own
Neither of them, Macri and Cristina, is experiencing the best moment of relations even with their coalitions. The PJ is chaired by Alberto Fernández, whom Cristina holds responsible for all the evils of the government. The last thing you want to do is do him a favor, even if the president has renounced his re-election bid.
He is angry with Peronism like Macri with a large part of the leadership of Together for Change. You don’t talk to radicals. Not even better with the PRO. He is convinced that Patricia Bullrich is a better candidate than Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. He does this by looking at the polls rather than speculating on loyalty.
The two rebelled against him and challenged him internally when Mauricio toyed with the candidacy. This forced him to get off. He has another grudge against Larreta, which is the head of government’s resistance to making Jorge Macri the only PRO candidate to succeed him.
Mauricio certainly knows his party’s commitments to the UCR to win elections in the past (his and Larreta’s) and co-govern in the district. He is obliged to demonstrate to the PRO militancy that he is not handing over the government they have to another party. He is compelled by loyalty to those below who brought him to the top. He wants to be away from a defeat scenario for his cousin Jorge against Martín Lousteau. Larreta has no choice but to take the risk.
CABA, a necessary fight
Dispute between JxC partners in CABA is inevitable. It’s not for reasons of desire or interest, a few sessions with Freud or the Marxes would be enough (Daniel, Carlos, it doesn’t matter). And from the need for subsistence of the fittest. A Darwinian struggle.
The PRO has his sanctuary in the CABA and is forced to defend it to the death. That’s what moves Macri, who knows without the CABA the night comes to the PRO.
Larreta, Macri knows, co-governs with the radicals, to whom he has handed over ministries, the Bank and the promise of a controversial PASSO. This leads Macri to denounce the agreement with the radicals, which allowed him and Larreta to reach the government, and govern the district until it becomes free territory of Argentina, a gourmet city that belies the legends of Creole decadence, which fuel the indignation of the candidates.
family quarrels
Nor for Patricia is all honeys with Mauricio. You met the top management of PRO a week ago at Jorge Triaca’s house e he had to listen to the harshness of his confrontation with Larreta. “- You sent me to Espert,” said Patricia. “- And you sent me López Murphy”, etc.
The dialogue escalated to the unspeakable when he reproached the Buenos Aires boss for using his administration to take advantage of the campaign. The tone he used is not the usual one in those meetings, in which everyone, in the end, admits an almost familiar relationship that prevents complaints from crossing paths.
After all, Macri must have reflected, he is part of the government cycle with Larreta, who has prestige among the electors and who has not received judicial reprimands for the administration. The last thing a family needs is to get bogged down in grievances. Macri knows this from personal experience.
Democracy in reverse
Determined to test the strength of the political system, the caciques of the majority coalitions insist on democracy in reverse. It is the one that builds candidates out of party oligarchies, instead of promoting the growth of genuine leadership. It’s in the republican tradition: to create power from the bottom up, not the top down, like in a puppeteer’s game.
The debate ends with a negotiation at the top of the de facto leadership of the coalitions, which They discuss the names of the most loyal candidates to the oligarchies and their representatives. Less than a legitimate construction of power is a minuet of courtiers where unspeakable affinities weigh more than anything else.
The insistence on an upside-down democracy is one of the causes of the fragility of governments, which go from bankruptcy to bankruptcy thanks to the surprisingly robust political system, which cannot be assumed to last forever.
The plot of Alberto Vicario de Cristina exhausts any explanation of the phenomenon. It is not new in the Peronism of yesterday or today. In Buenos Aires Axel Kicillof is a courtier chosen by the puppeteers. Cámpora was in 1973 and Isabel in 1974.
Source: Clarin
