A breviary of jokes

The pre-election agenda offers an overflowing display of pranks to antagonize the opponent. The keys are simple in the land of imperfect coalitions: It is best for those who maintain unity and can take advantage of the contradictions of others.

It is not a game of leaders who drag the crowds. Democracy is a community of listeners (Byung-Chul Han). It’s just about listening and representing people more than ideas. These are learned from books, and are useless if they are not ideas with experience.

Pope Francis, the Peronist Pope, recalled this in recent days: “It is not enough to communicate ideas: ideas must come from experience” (Antonio Spadaro, “Dialogue of the Pope with the editors of Jesuit magazines”, La Civiltà Cattolica, June 2022) .

The government has played to divide the opposition in the debate on the extension of cultural subsidies. He won by just 132 votes and the opposition faced him with a negotiated abstention of 92 seats and some tactical absences. He did it with more difficulty inwards than outwards.

The PRO asked for the 30-year extension to be rejected. Radicali and Lylist were more generous. If they voted divided, they played the game of the ruling party, which also imposed a unified vote among its own.

The 50 years of Deputies now go to the Senate, where Peronism is closer to the 8 years required by Together for change. The governors will ask for it so as not to damage the mass of tax sharing. But their goal was not to imagine the future but to demolish the opposition unit that had defeated them a week earlier with the sanction of the Single Ticket.

Campaign jokes that barely touch the underlying issues. The ruling party and the opposition think almost the same thing on the Single Ticket projects – which Peronism admitted before 2019 as an alternative to electronic voting -, cultural subsidies, rents, monotaxes – as can be seen in the agreement that was approved on Wednesday, etc. . But they are fighting driven by the shared tactic of differentiating themselves to build internal leadership and expand the race of votes outwards.

Rentals, revenge

For the 132 votes, the ruling party has exaggerated the stop. He summoned a bar of officials who crowded into the boxes as if they were from the opposition. They arrived in their official cars, their cell phones, custodians and even official secretaries to shout out a vote they had already secured. The most authentic thing that was seen was the image of Victor Laplace greeting the general with the raised arms. It was not so necessary if the goal had been the sanctioning of the particular affectations of cultural tribunes. But it was necessary if the aim was to drive out the opposition.

It was worth it, because this week that unified opposition will try to build the number to get a majority opinion on the bill to reform the rent law. It is difficult for them, because The PRO vs UCR-CC dissidence is repeated: Macri has called for the repeal of the law. Its partners prefer a change, which includes a 2-year term on contracts, with an update agreed between the parties and a trial period to review the system – 6 years, perhaps.

wars flourished

Was it worth giving a triumph and a showcase to a government that you are winning the battle with the public? Was it worth it when they came to hit it with the single ticket? The answer is simple: the opposition worked for its audience which, he understands, requires economic orthodoxy. Weak point: you already have that grade and you won’t lose it because you claim that cultural aids have a duration of 8 or 50 years.

The future is as unreal as eternity. One sector of JxC is afraid of getting votes from the right if it agrees to heterodox projects. It is meritorious in this round that they favored unity. To the 92 abstentions must be added the negotiated absences which could have been negative votes, which the ruling party would have noted as evidence of a division.

Cristian Ritondo was in Washington. Sharing the motto “I don’t vote for that”, they left the forum – the venue is a theater – Rogelio Frigerio, Federico Angelini, Laura Rodríguez Machado. Also Ricardo López Murphy, Fabio Quetglas, Margarita Stolbizer, allies like Humberto Orrego or Claudio Poggi. Hernán Lombardi was left with the task of arguing with some angry groups who flared up with his arguments. They responded with the old resource of macrista indebtedness.

A group referring to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta got up in silence and went to the bunker which opened in Olazábal at 1:00 pm. Among them Diego Santilli, Omar de Marchi and Álvaro González. They met at the federal table of sand larretismo coordinated by De Marchi. They enjoyed the details of their boss meeting with Luis Lacalle Pou in Montevideo. The president of Uruguay received it without a tie, but observed the visitor’s clothing: – You wear a tie … – It is because I was taught that to greet a president you must wear a tie. (Laughter is heard).

Ungrateful week for Cristina

For the ruling party, these are not pleasant days. Diputados has two broken axes. One was produced by Maxi Kirchner’s migration from bloc leadership. Another is the cannon shot that Sergio Massa received with the installation of Daniele Scioli in the cabinet.

Nor are these auspicious days for the family. For something Alberto asked Santa Fe to vote for a justice reform. is a preventive favor towards Cristinathat this week the Supreme Court of Justice could reject all resources delaying his trial in the Vialidad case.

The other message from the court is that it unlocks the causes of political weight in a non-election year. The court must resolve Cristina’s demands for an audit of all government road concessions. She believes that such viscous responsibilities on other governments as those attributed to her administration will emerge from this shock. More fine is the other resource, which asks for the closure of the case, because in a similar case it had already been rejected by the provincial justice of Santa Cruz. A nonsense, but which illuminates great peaks: jurisdiction will decide and it has been difficult to form a majority on this point.

Massa, the warning

The landing of Scioli places the cornerstone of Alberto’s last year of administration on the ruling party. It is moving because it is so alert to Massa that look for another love. Until now he has appeared as the owner of the “second half” of the Fernandez. He ran out of spokespersons with redradist announcements about the super ministries under his responsibility, with a dream team that would change course. The Fernandezes show him the tunnel and mark a milestone in his administration program.

Massa complains through friends on Twitter and his performance in the Wednesday session was a party of resentment, with negative judgments on the new phase of government in front of those who wanted to listen to him, and tell about it. You stop thinking, like Cristina, about that this government is destined to lose next year’s elections.

Furthermore, the Scioli dossier displaces him from any project. They will not console him with the appointment of one of his main advisors, Guillermo Michel, as director of customs. This economist acted as an advisor to Peronism in Congress on major projects. He assisted Miguel Pichetto and Sergio Massa in the negotiations between the Peronist governors and the Cambiemos government between 2015 and 2019 – fiscal consensus, budget, etc. After the divorce, he remained on Massa’s side.

gestures

Massa has encrypted Peronism’s losing streak since 2013 because he understood that there was a Peronism that was not identified with that proposed by Cristina more disruptive towards the moderate center-right: the furious Cristina who runs from April 2008 – rural war – to December 2011 – strains and nationalization of the YPF. This segment argued that the mass schism was dragged into dissent and not the other way around. He understood the dialectic of Peronism AMBA vs. Federal Peronism and reached an understanding with leaders and governors of a dozen provinces. Today that world does not exist.

Massa was left without an audience and returned to the AMBA fold. Today he has to endure the Fernández option for Scioli. Where would I go? For a randacist path, with Florencio who is alone and waits with Juan Manuel who will prepare his partner? Some daring hermeneutics of non-verbal language would make a plate of Sergio’s gestures in the Wednesday session, a feast of smiles, jokes and sweet thanks, as if he were in the best of worlds.

chaired a session of symbolic content with projects that the government would have approved without difficulty, but under the gaze of Maxi Kirchner who did not open his mouth from the bench, nor to celebrate the din of his government. Nor, and more significantly, to defend the government of her mother when Mario Negri – the opposition whip – asked ministers to summon him to explain the mystery of the black plane – in fact they painted it white. He listened in silence, like the whole FdT counter, as if the Iranian plots had taken place in another country or under a government without K. So don’t cry like a man for what you couldn’t defend as a woman.

Scioli 2023 depends on the unity of Peronism

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure it out Scioli will move as a candidate of Peronism. Those who know him also know that the new minister is not afraid of a thorny agenda, such as that of achieving Peronism without dollars and with an endless demand from sectors of the economy that hope that his portfolio will sponsor their businesses. . Few leaders of Peronism have more experience than he in unworkable negotiations.

It proved this in Nestor’s tenure as vice president and in his two terms as governor of Buenos Aires, when Christianity ran out of wits to put stones in its way. He hardly beat them; he ran for president in 2015 and lost by just over two points. The feasibility of a candidacy does not depend on him but on Peronism as a whole, forced as never before to maintain unity.

The task is complex because it represents the Peronism of the AMBA, which has lived in conflict with the Peronism of the rest of the country – that of the governors – for the last 40 years. Due to this geostrategic difference, the Peronism of the AMBA could never put a president of the Nation. It was the fate of Antonio Cafiero, Eduardo Duhalde, him and Cristina in 2019.

Manzur, disenchantment

It will cost Scioli to unite the unity of the two Peronisms, as much as to obtain the money for successful management in productive development. For those who look at the details: the first thing Scioli did after being sworn in as minister on Wednesday was travel to La Plata and play as a visitor in Axel Kicillof’s office.

The governors come from the disenchantment of Manzur who appeared to be the one who would represent them in an expansion of the ruling coalition. The chief of staff took office as manager of Federal Peronism. He had parchments of anti-Christianity and of him, when he took office, the same was said of Scioli today: that he would be a candidate in 2023. It didn’t last long. He was jybarized by his Peronist partners in the AMBA, starting with Cristina de Kirchner, who boasted that she proposed his appointment. Was it necessary to help him so much? Either she is unlucky or she is unlucky: she also boasted of being the electorate of Alberto Presidente.

AQ