Bad news was expected, but the figure had an impact on the provincial government like a pineapple: in the Buenos Aires suburbs, that area that Kirchnerism feels almost as if it were registered in its name and from where it expands its influence to the rest of the Peronist universe, poverty reached 45 percent of its inhabitants; homelessness, almost 10 percent.
That is more than the national average, which stood at 39.2 percent and 8.1 respectively. These are the figures released by Indec and represent the photo of the second half of last year. The blow is double: all the projections say that, so far in 2023 and the rest of the general elections, the outlook will probably worsen if inflation continues not to be tamed.
It is in this unfavorable context for any government that Governor Axel Kicillof will have to campaign for his re-election, which he has already run for even without the explicit backing of his party. Because the Buenos Aires PJ, led by Máximo Kirchner, held a catharsis meeting on Friday and missed the opportunity to expound forcefully on the president’s candidacy. It is that the most notable political impulse of the provincial justicialismo continues to be to demand that President Alberto Fernández not appear in the August Primaries, that he is not even a candidate for the Frente de Todos.
Cristina and the indices
The social panorama in the GBA is so complicated that the question inevitably arises at the tables of Peronism: will that fidelity to Cristina Kirchner be maintained in those homes that can no longer eat? How to reach those 5,750,000 poor people who live there, according to INDEC, and who are poorer than before with a hopeful message? The possible trick is being installed by the vice president in her speeches, with her invocations to “return” to past times that refer to her governments and in which she “lived better.” Taking off from the current national management, as if looking at it from the side.
But, as far as is known from her own words, Cristina will not be on the Frente de Todos ballots and, in any case, Axel will have to deploy the rhetorical resource himself. In his travels, Kicillof often hears complaints about Fernández, they admit to him. His tool to contribute a bit of his own stamp to the campaign have been and will be the lists of public works that are carried out or carried out in the Province during his term, paradoxically some financed by the Nation.
Months will come in which the governor will insist on showing and detailing routes, rooms, roads, etc., as an input for his electoral discourse, while he will navigate an ocean of complaints about the pocket economy.
At that meeting of the PJ, Máximo advanced a little more with the pressure for his mother to review the decision to get off: a mobilization was called in the Courts on April 13 to demand the end of the “proscription of Cristina”, something that in reality does not exist – if she wanted to, she could present herself as a candidate – but she has become the engine of the operative outcry.
The date recalls the first time that the vice president had to go to make a statement to Comodoro Py after leaving the presidency, about seven years ago, with militant accompaniment included. The act can also be read as a pressure on the Justice, a territorial correlate of the zafarrancho destined for nothing that Kirchnerism is doing in Congress with the impeachment of the Supreme Court.
The background information is that with Cristina out of the picture, the Buenos Aires PJ has not yet been able to put itself in campaign mode, it still appears knocked out, lost, looking for its direction, with less than three months left to close the candidate lists.
The other recent “lowered”, Mauricio Macri, ventured into the Province a few days ago in a supposed composing role after announcing that he will not compete for the presidency. The Buenos Aires PRO is going through the same war of nerves that the party is experiencing at the national level, furrowed by the fight between Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich for the presidential nomination, which for now would be settled in the PASO.
The internal ones, the dilemma
The dilemma that crosses the yellows is whether or not to carry out internships for provincial and district positions in the Province. Looking at the ferocity that the duel from “above” has acquired, they say they fear adverse political consequences if the rivalries are not managed well. Dispossession in the districts that govern, for example. Which are more than 20.
The bullrichistas seem to have taken note that, in the Buenos Aires underworld, Larreta has the advantage of having his candidate for governor, Diego Santilli, better installed than the trio officially sponsored by the former Minister of Security: Javier Iguacel, Joaquín De la Torre, Nestor Grindetti. For this reason, in the last few hours, the version of a possible alliance between Bullrich and the deputy Cristian Ritondo who, until now, had been referencing María Eugenia Vidal, another noted in the PRO’s pre-presidential race, even when the polls did not they smile.
The rapprochement between the two security priests of the Macrista era would not be so difficult (they met a few days ago), despite the fact that there was mutual mistrust in the past shared as colleagues. Voices that surround Bullrich do not finish digesting certain codes of the legislator, which has won detractors within Juntos, but Patricia entered a stage of remarkable pragmatism. It all adds up, he seems to think.
In any case, in that meeting between Macri and Buenos Aires referents, one of the ex-president’s obsessions would have also been discussed: what he believes is a blurring of the PRO concept.
Reserved polls that they handle in the macrismo would be showing elements so that certain alarm lights also turn on. For example, that the party that Macri founded would have lost that incarnation of the new and modern in a good part of the conurbano electorate. A quality, that of freshness, that today the libertarian Javier Milei would be transmitting more, who also appears as a beneficiary of the general anger against traditional politics. These items are evident, for example, in the high level of volunteering that Milei is getting to supervise the election. This phenomenon refers, in effect, to the first PRO.
