Sergio Massa and his political career: from the Argentine right to the left?

2023-11-15 01:53:00

The candidate of Unión por la Patria (UxP), Sergio Massa will face this Sunday against its rival from La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Javier Mileyin a runoff that will define who will be the next President. With more than 30 years of political careerthe Minister of Economy had a long career that found him in different positions and political spaces.

On more than one occasion, the head of the Treasury Palace he described himself as “passionate” and pointed to the Italian heritage that his immigrant parents passed on to him. “I’m super passionate, for better or worse,” he explained in an interview, in which he also revealed that he had strong fights with several of his relatives, almost coming to blows with his uncle and his father-in-law. He later assured that he no longer handles the same level of intensity that he had in his youth: “The blows shape you.”

Massa defrosts the dollar, but the market demands a correction aligned with inflation

According to the official candidate in the past, Since his youth he was interested in politics. In that sense, she remembered that when he was around 11 years old she would stand on a bucket and imitate the speeches of the officials that he saw on television.

Even during the closing of the campaign prior to the general elections he told a similar anecdote: “When I was six years old I told my teacher that I wanted to be President”. During his childhood, upon observing his interest in the world of politics, his paternal grandfather warned him not to follow that path. “Don’t get involved in politics, politics is stupid,” he remembers telling him.

Since he was little, Sergio Massa expressed interest in politics and expressed that he wanted to be president.

Throughout his political career, The official turned friendships into enmities and vice versa, repeatedly. In this regard, Diego Genoud, his unauthorized biographer, detailed to the news agency AFP that “it is difficult to find coherence in Massa. (But) he has the ability to always be well located and be coveted in the power market.”

“Even if you don’t have a plan, you constantly improvise and your promises are not kept, He always conveys the idea that he is in control of the situation and that he will find a way out.“said Genoud. An ability that his rivals criticize. “He is a dangerous guy precisely because of his ability to excite people. He is capable of making a speech with a ease and discursive effectiveness that one believes him, even though he goes completely contrary to the facts. One tends to believe Massa,” said radical deputy Fernando Iglesias, who explained that the minister “is only interested in the accumulation of power.”

Massa’s political career: liberal beginnings and passage through Peronism

Although the minister claims to be a Peronist, his beginnings in politics occurred during his adolescence, with the help of the Democratic Center Union (UCeDé)an ultraliberal right-wing party led by the economist Álvaro Alsogaray and which supported the government of Carlos Menem.

He was even elected president of the Secondary Youth Board of the UCeDé in the district of San Martín, in addition to presiding over the Liberal Youth in the province of Buenos Aires between 1994 and 1996. In addition to this, He was Alberto Albamonte’s campaign manager when the liberal deputy ran as a candidate for governor of Buenos Aires in 1991.

In the mid 1990s He turned his militancy towards Buenos Aires Peronism with the help of political leaders Cristina Camaño and Marcela Durrieu, her mother-in-law. After the merger of the UCeDé with the Justicialista Party (PJ), Massa worked with the gastronomic unionist Luis Barrionuevo in the Buenos Aires party of San Martín, where he is from. Years later, between 1998 and 1999, he served as advisor to Ramón “Palito” Ortega when the singer and former governor of Tucumán held the position of Secretary of Social Development of the Nation, during the Menem government.

In 1999, He was elected provincial deputy of Buenos Aires by the First Electoral Section, already as a member of the PJ, thus becoming the youngest legislator in the district at the age of 27. After the 2001 crisis, Eduardo Duhalde appointed him as director of the National Social Security Administration (ANSES)a position he held during his administration and the entire mandate of Néstor Kirchner.

In the 2005 legislative elections, he was elected national deputy for the first time. However, he resigned from the bench to continue in front of the public body, a precedent of what in 2009 were the “testimonial candidacies.” His time at ANSES would end in 2007, when He was elected mayor of Tigre by the Tigre Action to Grow list, in alliance with the Front for Victory (FPV).

The following year, in 2008, he would leave his position in the municipal Executive to take over as head of the Cabinet of Ministers of Cristina Kirchner after the resignation of Alberto Fernández, who held the position at that time. However, during his second presidential term, he distanced himself from the political party and in 2013 he beat it in the legislative election, when he competed with his party Frente Renovador (FR) against the list led by Martín Insaurralde. He even went so far as to maintain that “Cristina is the past” or that “she should be imprisoned”.

Massa’s political party and the previous presidential race

With the FR and away from the FPV, Massa used the concept of the “broad middle avenue” to define the purpose of his party, which was to form a broad majority to govern, without distinction of ideologies but with a Peronist heart. In 2015 he ran as a presidential candidate with that space, but came third with 21% of the votes.

Despite having lost in the first round, the former mayor of Tiger He did not express his support for either of the two presidential candidates. (Mauricio Macri for Cambiemos and Daniel Scioli for FPV). In that sense, his rejection of the current Brazilian ambassador was explicit: “I don’t want Scioli to win.” Likewise, he stressed that there was “nothing” that brought him closer to Kirchnerism. Regarding the Cambiemos front, he had clarified: “We have things that differentiate us and things on which we can agree, but I am a different space.”

In 2019, He reconciled with Kirchnerism, which is why he headed the list of deputies of the Frente de Todos (FdT) for the province of Buenos Aires. During the legislative elections of that year, he was elected with 52.64% of the votes. In that position, he would become President of the Lower House and third in the presidential line of succession.

Three years later, in 2022, he became Minister of Economy, a position he maintains with the idea that “the campaign is the management”. Massa took over as head of the Treasury Palace in the midst of the storm, after the abrupt resignations of his predecessors Silvina Batakis and Martín Guzmán, and was then praised by his colleagues. “Sergio took office three days before we left by helicopter,” declared pro-government leader Jorge Ferraresi, alluding to the abrupt departure of Fernando de la Rúa in 2001, during Argentina’s worst crisis.

MB / ED

1700015295
#Sergio #Massa #political #career #Argentine #left