[Polítics] What goes through the mind of Mauricio Macri: his double bet for the PASO, the hunt for the liberal vote and the agenda he wants to install

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What does Mauricio Macri want? If it were so easy to answer it, there would not be so many centimeters or seconds in the media dedicated to interpreting each of his words and his gestures. It is easy to deduce that he wants to be with his family, that he is passionate about bridge and that he enjoys being the opposition reference that sets the agenda of his space. And the presidential candidacy? "He will define it, yes or no, in March," say some who speak with him. "He prefers to be the one who will lower the hammer to the applicant," maintain others who know him.

The only sure thing is that every time he reappears in public he manages to capture the attention of public opinion and politics. As it happened last week: after returning from the United States, where he taught at the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom at Florida International University, the former president starred in a media raid that put him back at the center of the scene.

 

In their environment they slip that it is not by chance. They have measured by a consultant that if Macri lowers his public profile, no one from Together for Change capitalizes on his absence and the media focus on his internal fights, but when he makes statements he becomes the exclusive character of the opposition. The advice of his advisers is "not tire people out by always talking, but don't leave that place vacant." In these days, precisely, he returned to achieve what they recommend: that everyone talk about him. Right or wrong, but let them talk.

That is why last week he had calculated appearances on radio stations in Córdoba and Santa Fe, on cable signals TN and LN + and in a chat on Instagram with the radical deputy Martín Tetaz. There he stood in the middle of the scene and set the themes for his JxC partners. In this case, he reinstated the need for a labor reform, insisted on the privatization of Airlines and mentioned something central to his idea of what the next government should do: “There will be fiscal correction from day zero. In 2015 we ran it from behind because we had no support or decision to do it. This time there is no alternative,” he said. Will he have agreed everything with his peers?

 

 

That he did not agree on his definitions with anyone was made evident when in one of the interviews he got into a poisonous subject even for his own allies of Together for Change: he praised Carlos Menem. "Every time it will be more vindicated over time -said the former president-. He came with a modern Peronism, really trying to unite Argentines behind production, employment, progress, he pacified Argentina and these people (for the Government) have systematically preached hate speech again.”

Was it a wink to add more adherents of non-Kirchnerist Peronism? A day before he had said: “We already have the Republican Peronism of Miguel Ángel Pichetto with us. Hopefully we have more Peronists who join. The truth is that the Menemist defense of him ended up angering the head of the UCR, Gerardo Morales, and leaders of the Civic Coalition such as the head of the block of deputies, Juan Manuel López, and Mariana Zuvic. "We reject the neoliberal policies implemented by Menemism in the 90s that some voices of Argentine politics claim today," replied the governor of Jujuy from his Twitter account. These measures destroyed our productive apparatus, made us poorer and ended the hope of our people”.

Of course, in the same note in which he praised Menem, Macri had also attacked Morales. After a journalist asked him about the president of radicalism and considered that "he was close" to Alberto Fernández, he stressed: "He has to know that we represent change, we are not continuity, we have to know how to have an intelligent distance so as not to be groped, mani[CENSORED]ted”. Since nothing is casual in politics, Morales doubled his bet with his electoral launch for 2023: “I don't see myself in a presidential formula with Macri. Radicalism is going to have a candidate for president, I am one of them”

Behind these criticisms there is another political objective of the former president, which is to keep Together for Change away from the moderation towards the Government shown by leaders such as Morales and, at the same time, to contribute decisively to making the 2023 presidential candidacy successful. headed by someone from the PRO, a goal in which Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich have also been sworn in, until now (or until Macri is defined), the only pre-candidates of the party to dispute the presidency of the Nation.
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich

The former head of state gives air to both of them equally, convinced that each one will be able to contribute to the opposition formula the votes it would lack to prevail in the 2023 elections. He made this explicit last Wednesday during a meeting he held in his Olivos offices with 11 PRO provincial senators. There he was blunt: "Our party has to have, yes or yes, two electoral offers in the PASO." That is, Rodríguez Larreta and Bullrich competing with each other and against other UCR candidates.

Macri does not believe that this division of votes in the primaries represents an electoral risk, although other colleagues in his party think that it could weaken the PRO and make it easier for radicalism to lead the presidential binomial. He did not confess it before the senators, but some interpreted the reason for the former president's double wager: Bullrich's harsh imprint could attract the rising libertarian vote, while Rodríguez Larreta would do the same with the moderate electorate. That is to say, two very different candidates from the PRO, probably supported by leaders of another party in the coalition (Radicals, Liberals, Peronists or from the Civic Coalition) who would capture support separately in the PASO so that finally all remain under the JxC umbrella. in the general elections.

That is precisely the alternative that Rodríguez Larreta rejects: he prefers that the PRO presidential candidate emerge from the internal partisans and then face the one presented by the UCR in the PASO. Bullrich endorses the macrista variant to settle the nomination, although he would settle for the former president not raising his hand to the head of the Buenos Aires government. Without that key support, he is confident he could beat his powerful internal rival in the primaries. “When they say that there has to be a single PRO candidate, that there has to be a closed internal... No, we're going for democracy,” Bullrich proposed in an interview with the newspaper Clarín.

To advance with the internal PRO, as other parties have, there are leaders who admit a specific difficulty: the party could not organize itself in many districts and lacks a flow of affiliates proportional to their votes in the general elections. In the province of Buenos Aires, for example, the group founded by Macri would not have more than 25,000 members. Thus, some imagine resources such as the preparation of a provisional list for an inmate closed only to adherents

you go to the PRO. To arrive at this scheme, which was not even discussed among its top leaders, there is a specific complication: it would take a long time to organize it.
Mauricio Macri and Gerardo Morales, together, but separated
Mauricio Macri and Gerardo Morales, together, but separated

Rodríguez Larreta, meanwhile, continues to give implicit signs of his presidential plan without launching himself as a candidate. This is how the official five-day tour that took him to the cities of Berlin and Hannover, in Germany, and to Madrid, in Spain, should be read, complemented by a relaunch of the Buenos Aires management through works with the seal of a marketing slogan: “ The transformation does not stop. He will not neglect his forays into the interior of the country either. In January he was in Córdoba and in April he plans to visit Mendoza.

Bullrich is also preparing a trip abroad to install himself as a presidential candidate and will strengthen his political arming of Buenos Aires, although he had a problem with his main union side: the pharmaceutical leader Marcelo Peretta, presented as an opponent of the methods of "los Gordos" of the CGT, was infected in its worst ways when he hit a lawyer after a hearing at the Ministry of Labor and, given the repercussions of the attack, he did not apologize, he only said "sorry" and justified the act of violence.

Even so, in keeping with Larreta's motto, his "Patricia President" project will not stop either. They say that he confirmed to his collaborators that there is no chance of going back on his candidacy for 2023: “I go out into the street and people ignore me or hug me. Only 10% insult me. I don't have much more time to apply. I only have one shot and I'm not going to waste it."

Macri, accommodated as the computer of this game of presidential aspirations, declared these days that "it does not matter who (will be the candidate of Together for Change for the Casa Rosada) but for what." But he ended up in a verbal confrontation when he revealed that Juliana Awada, her wife, "is not in favor of him being a candidate" and that he "would never do it without agreeing with her." "It's going to be hard to convince her," he said, but he didn't definitively rule out that possibility: "She's not completely closed."

 

https://www.infobae.com/politica/2022/03/27/que-pasa-por-la-mente-de-mauricio-macri-su-doble-apuesta-para-las-paso-la-caza-del-voto-liberal-y-la-agenda-que-quiere-instalar/