Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri face the inevitable political emancipation of their former chiefs of staff

With its particularities, its differences of origin and course, Cristina Kirchner there Mauricio Macri They suffer the same fate at this time: they are witnesses and “victims” of an inevitable political emancipation of those who were their chiefs of staff. Alberto Fernandez there Horace Rodriguez Larreta They have made it clear that they do not wish to continue fulfilling the mandates of their former leaders and have given strong signals that they will go their own way, which even involves confronting their leadership.

The dispute between the president and the vice-president has a dramatic character and an impact on the daily life of Argentines that cannot be compared to the intrigues and differentiations between the former president and the head of the government of Buenos Aires. However, both processes agree that the very constitution of each coalition and, also, the future of the country will depend on its resolve.

As he explained in the interview he gave a few weeks ago to GlobeLiveMedia the sharp political analyst Eduardo Fidanza, Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri “are competent politicians but they have lost their political leadership. Both are in decline, in decline and with a low appreciation at the level of public opinion.

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In this report, he affirmed that the two leaders of the coalitions that structure the political system in place had “a tactical capacity but a strategic impotence”, since “in 2011 and 2015, respectively, both had the capacity to organize, to decide and to obtain membership, but today they are beginning to be challenged, they are beginning to dare”.

This scenario came to fruition last week when two simultaneous events occurred: Alberto Fernandez resisted Cristina Kirchner’s onslaught to drop her re-election bid at the same PJ meeting, and Horace Rodriguez Larreta He decided to launch his presidential candidacy with his own narrative and his own structure, independently of the former head of state.

Fernández served as chef de cabinet during the four years of Néstor Kirchner’s presidency and held this position between December 2007 and July 2008, under Cristina Kirchner’s first government. Instead, Larreta served as head of the Buenos Aires cabinet for the eight years Macri served as mayor of the city of Buenos Aires.

In the case of the president, the situation is even more complex, because it exposes the impossibility of the vice-president to impose a decision within the Frente de Todos. If almost four years ago a tweet was enough to enthrone the future president, these days his limitation to twist the will of his first chief of staff is exposed, but also to convince everyone that this decision is the best for the group.

Cristina Kirchner, meanwhile, backs a 6-year prison sentence and life ban for public works bribery that three federal trial judges handed down, a sentence that the vice president’s supporters present as a “proscription.” beyond the fact that it is not firm and has two other instances of appeal.

In recent hours, even the Minister of Security, Hannibal Fernandezhe said GlobeLiveMedia that indeed there is no “proscription” and that in reality La Cámpora and the most ultra Christian followers they want to proscribe is the President of the Nation, trying to withdraw a postulation from him and the opportunity to compete in PASO.

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In addition, at least two other people who work near Alberto Fernández and have an office at Casa Rosada have addressed this media and expressed in reserve that the decision to be a candidate remains, as well as the celebration of a internship within the Front. de Tous so that the definition of who will face the consecrated winner of the Juntos por el Cambio primaries is done by vote.

“Cristina Kirchner has always found it difficult to officially support Peronist governments that were neither hers nor that of Néstor, her husband. FOR Carlos Menem she faced him, but remember the day she said that the Justicialista Party was not a regiment and that she was not the Fernández recruit. Already Eduardo Duhalde He even had a senator come on a medical plane to vote against his government,” recalls an informant, who asked for his identity to be kept secret “so as not to make matters worse.”

And the same source underlined: “This government is so foreign to him that he allowed Máximo Kirchner to resign by slamming the door as president of the bloc of deputies. Unheard of from 1983 to here. Not even Miguel Ángel Pichetto, that he had nothing to do with them, did such a thing. He spent 12 and a half years as a bloc leader in the Senate.

The Macri affair with Larreta does not have this virulence or this institutional gravity, but it is not so different in the relationship between those who knew how to be the boss and the subordinate. The former president himself once said on television that “parricide” should not be committed, referring to those he believed wanted him removed from politics.

This undisguised malaise is not the only one that pushed him to be active and with a vocation to intervene in the construction of the future of Together for Change. But no doubt it had an impact on his belief that a “second time” is possible with his ideas for change, even if it was not necessarily with him as a candidate.

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Larreta had shown his own path, not openly confronting each other, but differentiating his way of building critical mass, adding points of view and dialogue rather than confronting and breaking up. It was not only a gesture of autonomy in front of Macri, but also in front of her internal rival, Patricia Bullrich, the most archetypal representative of the “hawks” of the PRO.

This Wednesday, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta will launch his presidential candidacy and make it clear that he will not go against Macri, but neither will he seek authorization or accept guardianship or supervision of a presidential project, which includes radicals, a sector of Peronism and to repeat the pattern of accumulation that has been running in the city of Buenos Aires since 2015. People around him even said: “I hope he is a candidate and that he presents himself. It would help Horacio beat him so that there is no doubt that it will not be another Alberto Fernández”.

Mauricio Macri last week, in a meeting he held in Cumelén with Gastón di Castelnuovo, a leader who aspires to be mayor of Ituzaingó, told him that his role was to contribute to generational transition and renewal leadership of Together for Change. He affirmed that his will was to help consolidate a succession in the coalition but also in the country, without messianic leadership or personalities.

Although he gave no clue as to whether or not he will be a candidate, he was internalized by the friction that exists between the second and third lines of Larreta and Bullrich in the suburbs of Buenos Aires and the risks that the opposition has the mayors intervening in these small Peronist penitentiaries to split the opposition vote and break unity. “He wants there to be a good trainee and he told me he would help in whatever he could,” Di Castelnuovo said.

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The psychology of political leaders generally responds to a mysterious logic, but to power – the possibility of losing or winning – the axis that controls thought and above all action.

Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri generally express in their public speeches and in private interviews a way of seeing the world and the country and of understanding politics that are very personal, unassailable and, above all, exclusive. The vice president and president are more prone to self-criticism on practice than on substance, and tolerance of dissent is promoted mostly from the second lines. In the book “Pour quoi”, Macri acknowledges having asked his collaborators for a certain liturgy to contradict him.

Neither – neither CFK nor Macri – agree or share the ways in which things are done in their coalitions and consider that the responsibilities of the present are not for what they have done, but for what they did not do. Even if they do not express it, they believe that they would do better and they have an intense minority who never give up the “operative cry”.

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