In this gray season, transitioning towards a I don’t-know-what, until December 10 you have to focus your gaze on the movements in the background, away from the anecdotes. There will be a lot of clandestine activity by the tunnellers of politics. For example, the movements of Peronism in Buenos Aires to facilitate the fate of the territorial ones who want to charge themselves the task of having traced the numbers of the PASO. Sunday’s defeat is also a consequence of the veto on the re-elections of mayors.

Crime doesn’t pay, some mayors laugh. Also keep an eye on the adventures to capture seats in the Upper House, which will allow the ruling party to regain the quorum in the Senate of the Nation. And to the rethinking of leadership in the Cambiemos alliance between the PRO, the UCR and the Coalition.

The first bill to collect is issued by the mayors of Peronism in the Province. They are recognized for the achievement of having brought the result closer than two points of difference with the opposition. This invoice is directed, not to the winners of Juntos, but to the losers in the internal struggle of Peronism with the territorial ones: Christianity that subordinates itself to Maxi Kirchner and the tempers of Massism. They are responsible for the law that prevents mayors from a third term.

They have shown it with the effort of the comeback. Together he also supported that law, but now everything will be negotiated in the Legislature. How can one not imagine, for example, a half-sanction of that repeal, with a judicial touch, that sends the case to the decision of the Court? As the wise men are the parents, the mayors believe they have the right to at least fight it. They did not do it before because they feared the political cost of the claim in the public. But this one has already given them the slap of defeat. What cost higher than a defeat?

The anti-system tangent unites Peronists with libertarians

The territorial Peronists who seek pay included something unspeakable in the service: they helped in some districts to animate the list of José Luis Espert, replacing ballots. Understandable. He channeled an indignant vote that reports three seats to the economist. They also included it in the delivery of suburban ballots. Understandable. There is a tangent that links the indignant cadre of the so-called libertarians – actually free trade conservatives – with Peronism, which is a right-wing conservative party.

That empathy is proven in that Javier Milei’s best choice was in Commune 8 of the CABA – Villa Soldati, Villa Riachuelo, Villa Lugano – a stronghold of social sectors identified with the anti-system. There he got 19.18%. In this sense, Milei becomes an anti-system expression like the one led by the Trotskyist Luis Zamora two decades ago. Between 2001 and 2005 Zamora had 4 national deputies and 8 Buenos Aires legislators. The news fever of the movileros makes them see something new where in reality there are common places that are repeated over time.

The crisis after 50 years of the Peronist Senate

The schism between these two Peronisms is as deep as that between the ruling party and the opposition. It is in that fall from power in the Senate, after half a century, that Sunday’s elections may signal a change of era. The size of the event will justify discrete undertakings to remedy the lack of numbers, which drags not only Cristina, but her partner Massa – who was one or two seats behind the tie in the number of legislators. It depends on a count in the province of La Rioja and another in Jujuy.

In 2009 they also lost their quorum

Remember to imagine reactions to situations like this in the past. There was already a moment when Peronism lost its quorum in that chamber. It was in 2009, after his defeat in the elections brought forward to June of that year. The Senate and the opposition were tied at 35 votes, and until December the chamber was paralyzed. Between June and December there were several frustrated attempts at special sessions, but legislative activity was not mobilized until Peronism managed to find partners to reach the 37 necessary votes.

There, yes, there were accordist vocations to capture senators who would give them a quorum. The government encouraged this legislative paralysis of almost six months by pressing with controversial projects such as the Media Law or the PASO law. Both were approved between August and December of that year. They were also the subject of irreconcilable debates in that tied Senate, the specifications of the candidates for directors of the Central Bank: all, including Mercedes Marcó del Pont, were in commission. Something that the ruling party will now try with wild senators such as Alberto Weretilneck, the missionary Magdalena Solari and the now emancipated Lucila Crexell – it moved away from the federal interblock of Juan Carlos Romero that linked it to Cambiemos.

If they will agree how then …

Cristina was president, and with that spirit she sent Florencio Randazzo to make an agreement with the opposition. Several were bitten, except for Elisa Carrió, who then as now, spoke of “hugging the bear.” It is the fear that the government will lead the opposition to share toxic decisions whose cost it does not want to pay. This year’s budget came to an end – September 15 – but so far no minister or finance technician has gone to explain anything. Alberto Fernández talks about an economic plan and a multi-year budget that contains the agreement with the IMF. For the voyeurs of the opposition, this has only one way: to lead the opposition to wear itself out by supporting a cut in subsidies, synonymous with a high rate.

Antonio Cafiero’s career ended at the end of the ’80s, when he agreed with Raúl Alfonsín on a constitutional reform, and later, to support him with exit measures from the economic crisis. It was a ruinous decision for his career as governor – he failed when trying to re-elect – and presidential – he was overthrown by an intern with Carlos Menem. All for playing pactism in the country of intransigence that is Argentina, where there have been parties that carried the brand “intransigent”, when the policy is the opposite, compromise.

Cristina had previously delivered her Amazons

The loss of seats causes direct damage to Cristina’s strength in the chamber and in the presidential trifecta. She doesn’t just have to pay for the loss in the district in which she is the boss. In these elections she has also lost candidates who are very loyal to her, such as María de los Ángeles Sacnun (Santa Fe) or María Luz Alonso, the “Luchy” from the Pampas. The two went second to senators for Peronism, which only the minority took out in those provinces. They occupied that place because already before Cristina had had to give in to the governors when accepting their candidates for senators.

The light in her eyes, Anabel Fernández Sagasti from Mendoza, also enters the minority, after experiencing her third defeat in a row against Cambiemos de Mendoza.

Radicals and the PRO are already struggling

Mendoza, incidentally, opens the fire of the debate in the opposition for the post-electoral rearrangements. Radicals from the province lead the festivities, because in the provincial capital, which is administered by Ulpiano Suárez, Cambiemos achieved the highest difference in the country in the category of national deputies: 60.11% to 17.90%.

The local referents, such as Alfredo Cornejo and Ernesto Sanz -now distant in the internal party- also have a national game, and they confront that record with the results of their partners in the CABA. Larreta celebrates the triumph in the city as a notable exception for an administration that suffered like few others from the Covid plague and from which the Government looted the treasure, with the removal of funds from the budget. But his internal adversaries remind him that, compared to the 2017 elections – whose legislators were due to expire this year – the result should have been better.

In 2017, the Carrió and Lousteau lists – when there was no Cambiemos – obtained, together, more than 65% of the votes. Vidal on Sunday, with those two unified sectors, gets 46%. In 2017, 10 deputies entered, now 7, that is, they lose three. In the line of legislators, Together there are 6 seats down compared to those they had.

Slights in the bunker

They answer you: you cannot compare results in such different contexts. Yes, but they still compare you, and even more so if the PRO makes unpleasant distinctions, such as denying the entrance to the stage of the celebration, on Sunday night, to leaders such as Miguel Pichetto or Governor Gustavo Valdés. And leave it to Cornejo, president of the UCR, among the public. The argument that there is no need to close to extensions is not enough. “Pichetto was right” when he opened up to another Peronism that ended up in the formula with Macri in 2019.

This time that block of non-Peronist votes rose further, to 42%, with victories throughout the country, or notable elections such as those in San Juan or Tucumán. The PRO porteño board of directors exhibited laurels on Sunday night in El Mirasol on the lower highway, but without partners, except for a fleeting Martín Tetaz. PRO has chronic dysfunctionalities. One is inbreeding. Another is to set the bar very high and always judge yourself dissatisfied. It lacks some of that morbid that Peronism has, which celebrates until defeats.

Carrió prepares exam table

The force of Elisa Carrió also enters into that settling of accounts, who regrets that her candidate for national deputy Fernando Sánchez has not entered. He was in position 8 of the Buenos Aires payroll. She is believed to be postponed by the leadership of the Coalition. It would not have cost much to his Buenos Aires partners to place him in an “accessible” position. Nor will it cost much to open a door for him now, appointing a candidate who is high on the list in the cabinet, and to leave the place for him. It will be a proof of love from Larreta.

Carrió is quietly preparing his presentation at the national congress of the Civic Coalition, 20 years after its creation. It will be on November 27 in the town of Open Door. He will deliver a speech in which he will vindicate the Moral Contract. A warning to their own, who are fascinated by the government’s calls for a settlement room. Lilita is careful at times like these. In 2014, he slammed the door on the opposition coalition that had won the place of third force in the 2013 elections. “It was an act of semiotics, the beginning of a thoughtful strategy,” he explained then. That’s where the Cambiemos project was born. There will be guests to that congress, and the list will reveal the filias and phobias of Carrió, who is the finest strategist of the opposition fury.

Larreta in those days has commitments in Madrid and London. All are opportunities for a change of skin. Before December 10 Juntos por el Cambio hopes to hold a table meeting with a unique theme: legislative strategy. They will already have resolved internal rancor over the conduction of the blocks. The baquianos trust in the negotiating capacity of the caciques. Others want to send all charges to a vote. They are excited about the effect voting had on the STEP. In Buenos Aires, the votes of Juntos are more than the sum of those obtained by Santilli and Manes. But there is something for everyone, in CABA Vidal’s votes are less than the sum of those who participated in the PASO. Enigmas for quinieleros.

Categorized in: