Mauricio Macri He had a Sunday of celebration, which he lived as a personal claim with a quota of Sicilian vendetta: he celebrated the victory of his cousin Jorge Macri in the internship of Buenos Aires, applauded the triumph of Patricia Bullrich contra Horacio Rodriguez Larretawhom he covered -literally- on stage, and highlighted himself for being one of the few leaders in the country who has a good dialogue with Javier Miley, the most voted in the country in the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory (PASO) elections. Among the ashes of his resignation to a “second time”, when his eventual candidacy dropped, Macri’s opposition leadership was reborn.
“Argentina enters a change of era”Macri stated from the Juntos por el Cambio bunker in Parque Norte when he was in charge of the final speech and showed himself to be in a leadership role, since he spoke after the winner Bullrich and the defeated Larreta did. On top of that stage, he was effusive in his gestures of affection towards his ex-minister and had the pleasure of standing in front of the Buenos Aires head of government, with whom he has been going through an unprecedented dispute for months that on Sunday night he considered settled in his favor against a who wanted to retire him.
Macri’s entourage had already begun to celebrate a mini-triumph a few days before when Bullrich and Larreta agreed to share the bunkerwhich enabled the former president to prepare the ground to be in charge of the closure on stage, whatever the result.
Macri had an oscillating role during the campaign, with some peaks of a lot of public activity and others of a low profile, coinciding with his trips abroad. In his moments of greatest prominence, Macri played strong. He first did it to support the candidacy of his cousin in the City: he was the manager of the idea of the move of the former mayor of Vicente López and publicly challenged Larreta when he decided to change the Buenos Aires voting system to concurrent ballot boxes . On the brink of closing the campaign towards the PASO, he crowned his strategy by giving his cousin a black chocolate alfajor Jorgito.
“He georgito was our way of cashing in on the nickname ‘Blackri‘ (alluding to ‘Black Macri’) that was already installed on social networks, looking to do something positive with it, a way to take advantage of it”, he told Letter P one of the creators of the idea, who had the cousins walking together through the Belgrano neighborhood, while the former president ate an alfajor, but made of white chocolate. “It’s clear that it worked because it wasn’t negative, there were jokes and it generated conversation,” he added.
profound change
The founder of the PRO said on Sunday night that the vast majority of the country favored a “profound change.” Close to him they consider that the results gave him the reason for his most insistent statement in recent times: that the alliance should not propose “expanding to the center” as Larreta claimed, but radicalizing his online discourse with Bullrich. Point for Macri.
The underlying dispute became deeper: the former president knew that a national victory for Larreta would jeopardize his own leadership. The PASO not only vindicated his commitment to Bullrich, but also his idea of bringing positions closer to the libertarian leader: “Adding up what Milei brought out, plus us, it is a huge majority of Argentines who are proposing a profound change, such as has not existed in Argentina for decades,” he said.
There have been crossed winks between Macri and Milei for a long time, which this Monday, the day after, the winner of the election decided to ratify in an interview with Radio The Network when telling that the founder of the PRO was the only one who sent him a message to congratulate him on the election. “With Macri we have an excellent bond, with Bullrich it is very difficult to go back and rebuild it”Milei said, adding that the former minister “gave her another chance and she went out to get dirty.”
Milei had already praised Macri during his closure at the Movistar Arena, when after defending Menem’s economic program, he pointed out that in 2015 Argentina once again had an alternative with the PRO leader, but blamed the “political class” to “put themselves in the middle” of that objective and clarified that they did not do it “from the outside, but also from the inside”, in his usual questioning of the more dialoguist wing of JxC that make up part of the PRO, the UCR and the Civic Coalition.
This Sunday, from the stage, Macri anticipated the strategy for October: “Starting tomorrow a new game begins. A new conversation, a new debate,” he opined and celebrated that the results leave behind “very harmful ideas” in a reference to Kirchnerism.
in dialogue with Letter P, from their environment they trust that they will be able to advance with the strategy of repositioning it as the leader of the space. They are convinced that they have what to do it with: they think that their “capital” today is that he is the only PRO leader who can win something from Milei’s vote.
