The president of the National Committee of the UCR, Gerardo Moraleswas dispatched with a harsh message to Mauricio Macri, after the criticism of the founder of Pro towards Hipolito Yrigoyenwhom he identified as the “origin of populism” in Argentina, which continued “later with Perón and Evita”.
“Living off the rift isn’t the way to go, much less generating another rift in PvC by attacking the UCR like you’ve been doing lately.”, begins the letter that Morales addressed to Macri through social networks. “The path is tolerance and dialogue, attributes that society demands of those of us who have political responsibility. The same attributes that until recently you claimed of Hipólito Yrigoyen, a statesman like few others”, continued the head of the UCR and added: “To denigrate the historical figure of a person who gave his life to the work of a better Argentina is also to make him damage to our history as a country.”
But the governor of Jujuy saved the strongest darts for the end of his letter. “I see that far from assuming your historical position and positioning yourself above political pettiness to serve as an actor in a construction space for the good of the country, you are succumbing to the temptation of jumping on ephemeral trends that only bring more destruction”snapped Morales, referring to Macri’s drift towards liberalist positions and referents, in addition to his praise for libertarians such as Javier Milei who spoke out against the nationalization of YPF and the public university, two of the milestones achieved by Yrigoyen that Morales recalled in the letter.
“If your intention is to break JxC to seek an agreement with sectors of the extreme anti-democratic right, it is best to say it concretely”completed the radical leader and reminded him: “Mauricio, we already discussed this personally in August 2014. I remember that at that time we assumed the commitment not to deepen the differences we have but to consolidate our shared versions, in order to privilege the Argentine people above all else”.
“The Radical Civic Union ratified its membership of JxC because we are convinced that it is in the confluence of democratic and republican parties where the possibility of giving the country a better future lies and because we are a political party whose territorial deployment will guarantee a new alternative of change and transformation for Argentina”, said Morales, who highlighted the structure of radicalism in the face of the next elections and referred to the last party assembly who presided Gaston Manes where they tried to ward off the ghosts of rupture and in the final document of the National Convention they affirmed that “these are times of coalition presidentialism and the unity of purpose today is to maintain unity and improve Together for Change.”
Macri targeted one of the founders of radicalism by speaking at the International Freedom Conference in São Paulo where he called for “fighting populism globally.” “This populism is not just a problem in Latin America. Perhaps it originated in Latin America and perhaps Argentina is where it started, first with Yrigoyen and later with Perón and Evita. This is very contagious and it has spread to the rest of the world,” said the former president.