What has just ended may have been, in political and management terms, one of the toughest weeks for Axel Kicillof. The assassination of the bus driver in La Matanza expanded the social mood and once again put his minister Sergio Berni in the eye of the storm. Nor do they bring good news from the electoral side for the Governor, because the Frente de Todos continues without being able to define a presidential candidate in the midst of the deaf fight between Kirchnerism and the Casa Rosada.
That political noise begins to worry Kicillof. In the first instance, because in his environment they believe that this lack prevents drawing up an electoral strategy. And secondly, because this absence -despite the operative outcry, the majority of the leadership is convinced that Cristina Kirchner will not compete-, may reopen the door for official necessity to end up pushing her to the national fight to which He does not want to go up because he seeks to go for re-election.
This concern should be traced in certain definitions that came to light in the midst of the commotion that occurred in La Matanza due to the murder of the bus driver and the attacks on Berni. Kicillof’s chief of advisers and one of his trusted men, Carlos Bianco, went out to fight the President’s sector so that he would go to the Paso with his own candidate for governor. This movement that seemed aimed at chicaning Aníbal Fernández in the context of the fight between the Province and the Nation over the presence of federal forces in the Conurbano, is actually the most literal translation of the Kirchnerism position regarding the possibility that Alberto Fernández competes for re-election: if the President wants to contest, look for candidates at all levels and don’t even dream of having Kicillof on your ballot.
It is a form of pressure so that Alberto F. finally gives up and ends up ordering a board in which, at the national level, there are no blockbuster chips in the ruling party either. The Buenos Aires election is held simultaneously with the national one and the figure of the presidential candidate is key due to its drag effect. Kicillof also looks uneasily at what is still an unknown in his own space.
“In the Buenos Aires Governor’s Office, the lack of definition regarding who will be the presidential candidate of the Frente de Todos is worrying”
The La Matanza episode also triggered official alerts. And he tempted the ruling party to a first reaction that faded as the days went by: attributing a political connotation to the shocking fact of insecurity. The idea of linking the attacks on Berni with the PRO presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich became an extreme political move. Also, the fact that strange overtones were given to the assault and death that occurred in the bus as if it were a strange and unfindable landscape in the scenario of daily insecurity.
The minister, meanwhile, remains in office. Kicillof does not plan to get rid of an official on whom he rests a key aspect of his administration, such as security management. He also has the support of Cristina Kirchner. They have gone to see the vice presidency on several occasions with the proposal to run Berni. The answer has always been the same: “Bring me a better one and we’ll see”.
There are issues of opportunity that also play. Removing Berni from office now would mean acknowledging a failure in the official policy against crime. A few months before the elections, it emerges as an unexpected alternative.
In the midst of complex days for the ruling party, the version about a possible electoral unfolding in the Province once again flew over in recent days. Close to Kicillof, they acknowledge that there was a poll in this regard, but they attribute it to opposition emissaries supposedly interested in avoiding being harmed by the drag effect of Javier Milei’s presidential ballot.
“There is no time left, there are no chances,” they say in the Governor’s office. Beyond the difficulties to implement a measure of these characteristics, why would the ruling party agree to a proposal that could harm it? Buenos Aires politics spoke of this issue in recent days, but everything seems unlikely.
Kicillof, meanwhile, has until the 15th of this month to finalize the call for elections. And there one of the unknowns will be cleared up. Only one in the midst of so much official uncertainty.
