The electoral defeat and the Cabinet crisis precipitated by the intern gave way to a campaign scheme that erased a good part of what had been done until September 12, STEP day. They ran a couple of weeks and it seems that the trend is to replace the formula that was the loser, that is, the hard polarization with Together for Change and if possible with Mauricio Macri. An elementary scheme that, in practice, would end up enshrining Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and not Alberto Fernández or the ruling party in general as the other side of the dispute. The former president’s tweets in recent days expose her brand in that turn.
The phenomenon is more visible because it occurs in parallel with the blurring of the President. This shift by Alberto Fernández was presented not as an award of the cost of the defeat, but as part of a “strategy” to review the campaign broadly. And your first expression was trying to get out of polarization and its usual consequence, the sense of a plebiscite that was imprinted on the primary elections. The result, measured in this way, did not recommend insisting: more than two thirds of the electorate had just voted against the Government or, if you prefer, had opted for different versions of the opposition.
The more limited role of the President in the campaign and, most strikingly, in official activity with an electoral sense came after the wear generated by the internal dispute that forced the modification of the Cabinet. From then on, any activity of Alberto Fernández It became a function of the domestic pulse. This can be seen today in the event organized by the social movements. And something similar happens with the concentrations planned for Loyalty Day. The presence on the stage and the degree of attendance of Kirchnerist referents will also end up constituting data of interest.
Outward, the move is more complex. The idea of changing the campaign axis expresses at times new questions about the direction. The first signs after PASO were easy to spot. Show management with announcements and a new active cabinet, headed by Juan Manzur from Tucumán. The incorporated names do not show an image contribution. Quite the contrary, according to surveys that have circulated in the last ten days.
Everything started from a partial reading of the results of the primaries, basically focused on the economy and without attending to the broader dimension of the crisis. And the answer was summarized as direct or indirect income assistance, which in some cases -IFE, retirees- could be finalized later, with the November elections more in sight. The worst definition was provided by the phrase “little silver in the pockets”.
To make matters worse, the leading role was no longer restricted to photos of “unity”, with the President, CFK, Sergio Massa, Máximo Kirchner and Axel Kicillof together with the candidates, who have been largely relegated until now. It was decided to territorialize the campaign, with the mayors in Buenos Aires and each governor in the provinces managed by Peronism. That too It was intended to be a point of equilibrium with the national campaign, revolving around vaccination and the near end of the pandemic, to generate both economic and social expectations. The results They put that scheme into crisis, with harsh internal criticism from local bosses and harsh Kirchnerism, especially on the economic area, as oblivious to what happened.
In fact, now they began to be warned symptoms of lack of political tone due to the impossibility of sustaining interest announcements continuously. And in this context, any activity that, on the campaign desk, was imagined as a message of empathy with some social fringe came to be highlighted. For example, the photo of the President with L-Ghent.
CFK’s gestures impacted with greater intensity. And they weren’t isolated episodes in any sense. He returned to the charge against Macri. He said that JxC only seeks to expand its legislative weight to “guarantee impunity” for the former president and accused him of wanting to “mock” Justice. He once again confronted the opposition in the Senate, with disqualifying gestures and phrases that were circulated on social media without delay. The point is how much it adds out of the vote considered own.
For now, it is clear that it polarizes. And that is not an anecdote. Just yesterday, in that session of the Senate -the first face-to-face since the first quarantine-, the ruling party decided not to validate a budget execution of the previous management and the setting to attack Macr was notoriousi, something that for obvious reasons and electoral calculation was not allowed to pass from the other side of the street.
The day before, Máximo Kirchner had tried to impose a special session in the Deputies, with an agenda headed by the project for the frontal labeling of food. It is an initiative with a certain consensus, played this time in the first legislative dispute after the PASO. The head of the ruling bloc went to the charge against JxC -exclusively, and not against other sectors that did not provide a quorum- and put the focus on the dispute with the macrismo.
It is striking, because some references of JxC consider that they can take advantage of a dispute in those terms, in the face of simultaneous competition with third parties. They believe that the vote that accompanied them again in the primaries is assured –an idea always in a risk zone– and that the priority now is to show itself as the only force capable of putting a limit to Kirchnerism and especially to CFK. A way to dispute every inch of other options, from Javier Milei and José Luis Espert to Florencio Randazzo. An also simple scheme.
In the ruling party there is no lack of defensive calculations and from that perspective, recovering votes could be interpreted as sustaining one’s own nucleus, at least as the first objective. Those speculations weigh heavily and surely also the old reflex of choosing the enemy. The immediate antecedent -the STEP- exposes that it does not always work.
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