Alberto Fernandez and Pedro. new dispute in the ruling party / Archive
Lula’s visit to the country to participate in the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States once again staged the open dispute between Alberto Fernández and Kirchnerism. Although it is a recurring confrontation that grew after the midterm electoral defeat and the signing of the agreement with the IMF, now the closeness of the definitions for the candidacies in the Frente de Todos only deepened that gap.
De Pedro complained about the “lack of codes” of the circle close to the President
The recently inaugurated Brazilian president ended up becoming the unwitting stone of renewed discord. Official sources say that Cristina Kirchner was upset because she was unable to take a photo alone with the president. For one reason or another, the meeting did not take place and that situation generated suspicions that once again pointed to the Casa Rosada. But yesterday an additional controversy emerged that, in part, is tied to the previous one and that involves Eduardo “Wado” De Pedro, the vice president’s main sword in the national cabinet.
The Minister of the Interior made his anger public because he was not invited by Alberto Fernández to a meeting between Human Rights organizations and Lula. Furious, De Pedro let it be known through his spokesmen that this decision was due to the electoral fight in the ruling party in which the President, on the one hand, is embarking on his re-election project and the leader of La Cámpora appears in the Kirchnerismo bolillero to happen it.
The word used in the minister’s environment to define the sensation that the non-invitation produced in him was “pain”, because Human Rights is an issue that has to do with his personal and political history (his parents are missing and it is founder of the group Hijos) and considered that mixing these things with electoral speculation is no longer “having codes”.
“They did not invite him because Alberto sees him as a competitor for the next elections,” they said in the Ministry of the Interior. Apparently, Wado found out about the meeting because some Human Rights organizations picked up the phone to notify him. But in the end it was not because he was waiting for an invitation from the Presidency that never came.
THE ELECTION DISPUTE
The minister’s anger is inevitably related to the electoral question that crosses the internal one of the Frente de Todos and is transferred to the march of the Government. De Pedro is one of the names that Cristina Kirchner is considering as a possible candidate for president in a scheme that, although it is not the only alternative, excludes and closes the door on Alberto Fernández’s re-election aspirations.
Casa Rosada sources ruled out any political intent in De Pedro’s absence. “Actually, no minister attended that meeting,” they said. “The ministers were at the signing of mutual cooperation agreements within the framework of Celac and, in addition, that meeting had been requested by the Human Rights organizations that wanted to meet with the President and Lula,” they added.
Beyond the official explanation, Alberto Fernández’s “no” gesture rekindled the flame of Kirchner’s anger against the President, who for a few days has resumed the offensive that aims to close his re-election dream.
In this sense, both Senator Oscar Parrilli and Governor Jorge Capitanich and Buenos Aires minister Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque launched a series of demands for Fernández to adopt tougher positions in the context of the impeachment trial against members of the Supreme Court.
De Pedro’s anger and, in particular, the dissemination of it, seem inscribed in the same logic of differentiation and political erosion of the president’s project to stay four more years in the Casa Rosada.
Cristina, meanwhile, continues to bet on Sergio Massa’s eventual candidacy (if he manages to tame inflation), Daniel Scioli’s alternative in case plan A fails, and also on De Pedro’s, although the name of the minister of Interior also sounded like a candidate for national legislator for the Province.
In the midst of the political commotion, the government sought last night to tone down the renewed dispute. “I consulted ‘Wado’ and he told me that he never said anything about it, that it’s crazy. It’s all a journalistic invention. The minister says that he never said anything about everything that came out, ”said presidential spokesperson Gabriela Cerruti.
In the Government they sought to lower the profile of the new scenario of fight with the K
“If the minister has something to say, he will say it. We are not going to speculate. For us it is not an issue because we asked the minister and he said that he had nothing to do with it or had said what came out in the media, “concluded the official.
The official effort to minimize the political damage of the case, did nothing more than make the open-air dispute that is registered in the Frente de Todos black on white.
The fight for the presidential candidacy that everything presumes will end up being defined in May, a month before the closing of the lists scheduled for June, deepens the differences in an officialism that lives an atypical situation: a President who seeks re-election against the majority partners of the ruling alliance that rejects it.
