“Give me time until after Easter”, Alberto Fernandez told them. Some members of the Cabinet believed him and were enthusiastic, to the point of promoting a relaunch of the Government; one of them even played a bet: he assured his team that he was willing to leave if this time he was disappointed again. Others, those who long ago stopped celebrating the abductions of the President’s autonomy -which always take place in exacerbated settings, where the rebellion suddenly becomes charming, but begins to subside as soon as the presidential entourage leaves the Olivos Residence-, kept to the margin, silent. A week after Easter, the most cautious wing seems to be right, the one that believes that no important change will be possible and that it will be necessary to manage management in a climate of hardship and internal sabotage until the last day.
There was not a single retouching of names in the Government and not a single show of real power against Cristina. Alberto decided to do without even the symbolic or instructive gestures that are the minimum demanded by a sector of his own troop. They are the ones who sponsored the changes during the last fifteen, twenty days. For them they are days of nerves. Few continue to trust that there will be a rearrangement of power. Not even the idea of kicking out some of the officials from the cristinista kidney who blow up the administration with deeds, words or both did not prosper.
Among his most recent thoughts, Alberto evaluated the possibility of getting rid of the Undersecretary of Energy, Federico Basualdo, and Roberto Feletti, the Secretary of Commerce, due to their rudeness and challenges regarding an impending catastrophe: one, in energy terms and the other, due to the rise in prices. He didn’t cheer up. He let himself be guided by those who whisper to him what he himself thinks: that the feared hell with the vice president would break loose at that very moment. As if what happened until today had been just child’s play.
Now, in Fernández’s entourage, they affirm that they are going through moments of a certain calm with their partners and that there will be no new dissident gestures in the short term by the officials who represent the thought of Cristina and La Cámpora. They maintain that the delay of the changes opened a new opportunity for them. And that there is room to negotiate with the vice president, even if not directly. Who wants to believe, let him believe.
It is true that in recent days there have been some conversations between the Instituto Patria and the Casa Rosada, although always in a context of extreme weakness and mistrust, and of the lack of dialogue in the presidential duo, a fact that some members of the alliance try to make normal. The men and women who respond to Cristina, even boasted of having dragged Albertism to support the initiative to dispute the places in the Council of the Judiciary with the controversial rupture of the block of Senators. “It was a smart move,” they admitted at the top of the Casa Rosada.
Vilma Ibarra, the Legal and Technical Secretary, joined on Twitter to support the appointment of Senator Martín Doñate to occupy the bench in the body in charge of appointing and removing judges, to which the opposition aspired. Her position generated some perplexity in some leaders, as Albertist as her, who perhaps would have preferred not to be stuck to the maneuver. Ibarra was one of those who stopped the momentum of her peers in the Cabinet who wanted profound changes and a notorious distancing from Christianity. The official asked to take care of the unit and not move pieces without first thinking about the balance of the coalition.
Alberto had been informed that three or four strong movements were under analysis in the Senate. One was to disregard the ruling of the Supreme Court. The other encompassed him: Christianity came to fantasize about a presidential DNU to establish a new composition of the Council, without the President of the Court, Horacio Rosatti; Alberto made it known that he was not willing. The president knew that the rupture of the bloc was under evaluation, but found out a few minutes before the consummation, almost in tune with the journalists.
Fernández insists that he is not going to let the members of his political staff or the businessmen or the journalists run away, and it goes on to say that it will introduce modifications when it deems it prudent. As he ponders, his allies become agitated and press for the matter to move forward soon. Several governors, for example. They send to Olivos the message that they will advance the provincial elections so as not to be stuck to the national ones and to the negative drag due to the effect of the management. “I am going to summon them for March,” Raúl Jalil, from Catamarca, made it known this week, who in 2019 won with more than 60% of the votes.
Another one who evaluates it is Jorge Capitanich, whose reproaches to the central administration are constant: “You cannot do something different with the same people”, he has said. Capitanich flirts with putting himself at the head of the provincial bosses who seek to condition the President. And he plays his own game. He hopes that Cristina will place him on the list of candidates for 2023.
Capitanich, like hard Kirchnerism in general, points against Martín Guzmán. The slogan is invariable: they want it out. The Minister of Economy has just met with Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF. She said that the goals agreed upon with the agency will not be modified, which implies an adjustment in spending – which the minister denies at the same time – to reduce the deficit and try to control inflation. The rise in prices is very high and the promise that the April index drops considerably from the 6.7% it gave in March is not being fulfilled.
At that point, Guzmán begins to run out of bullets. Part of his strategy has become to blame the political factor. He points out that the instability of the ruling coalition conspires against his plan. She has discussed it with Alberto. With him he has been analyzing since last year that the officials themselves cannot kick against. It would be better to throw them out. He cannot help but reap furious darts from the internal enemies of him. If inflation continues at these levels, it will be difficult for the President to keep him in office.
In the opposition they begin to make diagnoses cincreasingly alarmist about the price increase. There are those who conjecture that the crisis could become unpredictable. Mauricio Macri, for example.
The former president has become a permanent consultant for Together for Change. Even from those who looked at him out of the corner of their eyes when he left the presidency or predicted his retirement. With them, Macri he takes small revenge: Sometimes you don’t reply to messages or take a while to receive them when they ask you for a meeting. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta recovered the daily dialogue with him, the same as María Eugenia Vidal. Patricia Bullrich never lost it. But Macri also exchanges messages with Javier Milei and with the probable candidates for governor of Buenos Aires, from Diego Santilli to the radical Martín Tetaz.
The flirtations of Macri and Bullrich with Milei They infuriate the UCR. In a barbecue in which Gerardo Morales, Gustavo Valdés, Facundo Manes, Alfredo Cornejo, Mario Negri, Luis Naidenoff and Ernesto Sanz participated, it was remembered close the door to the liberal economist. More than that: the radicals will ask that the PRO be defined soon at that point. “They are not going to take us like this until 2023 to define at the end”they trust.
Macri maintains high levels of disapproval in the Conurbano, but could become indispensable for the internal opposition. Without him you can’t; against him, less. Today everyone seeks his blessing and hopes that he does not want to participate. The engineer promises them nothing. “Compete in the PASO”, He says. It is not what Larreta or Bullrich expected.
Macri enjoys walking around the world, without the pressure of his allies. In his meeting with Donald Trump, he got an unexpected confession. Trump told her that in the 2024 presidential election she will run as a candidate and that she will take revenge on Joe Biden. This is how Macri told it to a group of leaders in his offices in Olivos.
“And he didn’t ask you what you’re going to do?”
“Obviously,” he replied.
The guests, one of them with big political ambitions, grew anxious.
“And what did you answer him?” They wanted to know.
Macri laughed and said:
-I don’t remember.