Axel Kicillof is preparing to announce a correction to the salary agreement that he signed towards the end of February with the state and teacher unions. This is a decision that recognizes the impotence that the ruling party has been displaying to contain the soaring inflation in a scenario in which the dynamics of rising prices is finding no brake.
In the Government they observe this phenomenon with concern. The review of the wage agreement that is barely a little over two months old is the most forceful symptom that the progress of the economy is working as an anchor for the Frente de Todos. The central problem observed in some official offices is that the horizon does not seem to be clearing. The salary palliative that supposes to advance for this month the payment of the quota of the salary improvement of 14 percent originally foreseen for July, is hardly a balm in the midst of a growing social bad mood.
A recent study released by a consultancy dedicated to listening to the behavior of prices, yielded shocking data: in the Conurbano, where the most consolidated vote of Kirchnerism nests, the increase in the value of food was 50 percent in the first four months of the year. It is a phenomenon that impacts the waterline of the electoral battleship of the Frente de Todos.
Close to Kicillof, they observe that this deterioration shows no signs of finding a stop. That is why the Governor is embracing the card that he saved to play if the situation worsens: advance the elections in the Province and detach himself from the national debate. It is a play with an uncertain ending but it is on the official ticket table as a last resort alternative.
The Governor will wait to make a decision until the lists of candidates are presented on June 24. Then he will light a decision that will balance the economic situation and the electoral architecture that the ruling party managed to design.
In the midst of this internal debate, the figure of Cristina Kirchner appears. In the last few hours, a renewed clamor for her to be a candidate appeared, pushed by versions born from the ruling party itself, in the sense that the vice president would be rethinking her refusal.
“Rodríguez Larreta would be resisting the idea of sharing the candidate for Governor with Patricia Bullrich”
This political fact is central to Kicillof: if Cristina agreed to the request, the split would no longer make sense. It is also because it would finish clearing the path that he himself began to weed for long months: the one that leads him to the candidacy for re-election. There would no longer be a reason for some sectors of the ruling party to insist on his national nomination that the Governor resists but that he would end up reluctantly accepting.
Together for Change is also navigating troubled waters. The dispute in the PRO continues to escalate amid growing pressure for Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich to agree to have a single candidate for governor.
The standard-bearers of this attack are the mayors, who do not want this dispute to complicate their lives in their districts. There would be a novelty in the midst of that discussion: now it would be Rodríguez Larreta who would resist that idea. Bullrich, she would be willing to analyze it.
All this movement is centered on the name of Diego Santilli, the candidate who measures the most among the leaders already launched. The mayor of Buenos Aires would be resisting precisely for this reason: he would refuse to share with his national opponent the best positioned opposition leader in the Province.
The pressure to unify a candidate is also pushed by sectors of radicalism and the Civic Coalition. The president of the Buenos Aires UCR Maximiliano Abad is one of the standard-bearers of that position that is also shared by the majority of the mayors of the centenary party.
Beyond the benefits that some members of Juntos por el Cambio believe they see in this possibility -it would allow them, for example, a block negotiation and avoid dispersion between two internal offers, especially in the UCR-, they believe, a most successful scenario in the Province. In tune with the deterioration of the economy, they estimate that the dispute for the Governorate with Kicillof now looms possible. Hence the idea of planting a name that emerges in the Paso as the undisputed contender for the current president.
The radicals will talk about this on June 3 at the Buenos Aires Convention. There will also begin to clear up part of the unknown that still persists regarding whether the UCR will support until the end the idea of going with its own candidates to the Passage of Together for Change.
