Still reeling from the primary election result, Peronism put first this Monday the analysis of the reasons for the hit by Javier Milei and the design of the new stage of the campaign Sergio Massawhich will look for gain centrality in his presidential character and compromising the leadership of the districts that understands that they took the body from the PASO on August 13.
The map of the national results was eloquent. Unión por la Patria (UP) was the winning alliance in only five provinces: Formosa, Chaco, Santiago del Estero, Catamarca and Buenos Aires. In the last two, the national elections coincided with those for governor. So much Raúl Jalil, in Catamarca, as Axel Kicillof, in Buenos Aires, they are playing for re-election.
In Santiago del Estero, Peronism got 53.3% of the votes. The governor Gerardo Zamora was the main promoter of Massa’s candidacy against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner y Alberto Fernandez. Although it was difficult for him to digest the news of the presidential candidacy of the Minister of Economy, Jorge Capitanich it also got Massa to be the most voted candidate.
The Chaco governor also played his own game. After losing the provincial PASO, on June 19, Capitanich needed a national victory that would push him for the generals on September 17. Although he got involved in the national campaign “at the last moment”, they say in UP, he managed to turn his province blue. Formosa offered no doubts. As expected, the governor Gildo Insfran guaranteed a Peronist victory that had no surprises and that promises to be more bulky in the general election.
The massismo put the magnifying glass on the rest of the districts, where the league of governors that agitated “Massa presidente” failed to avoid Milei’s surprise victory. Salta, Tucumán, San Juan, Misiones, La Rioja, La Pampa, Chubut, Río Negro, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego, where Peronism or allies govern, were in the line of fire.
“The governors made the iron”, was the conclusion that flew over the C Art Media Complex, where the ruling party received the results, the same Sunday night. In Tucumán, where Peronism easily won the provincial elections on June 11, attention was focused on the internal one between the governor Juan Manzur and his successor Osvaldo Jaldo. The result in Misiones was especially surprising, where the Frente Renovador de la Concordia that governed the province for two decades played publicly in favor of Massa. The Peronist candidate came second, with 27.15% of the votes.
The massista team analyzed the political complexities of each district and recalled that the governors themselves disbelieved in the libertarian’s numbers the days before the election. On Saturday, in Massa’s team they warned that Milei exceeded 25 points in the national dispute and that had grown in recent hours at the expense of UP and Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) to the beat of the bad news linked to acts of insecurity and the feeling of anomie that was floating in the air. Now they will put the numbers on the table to analyze the search for new votes.
Is the league of governors going to feel comfortable in an eventual government of Bullrich or Milei? The question has already traveled to all the districts where Peronism can add more votes. The massismo already has the list of the provinces in which it believes that the result can be reversed. “The map is going to change a lot in October,” they trust.
The organization of the campaign is “under review”, both in terms of internal coordination and with the provinces and the Casa Rosada. Until now, the leadership was in the hands of De Pedro, although Massa ceded a portion of the decisions to Juan Manuel Olmosand their own, Sebastian Galmarini, raul perez y Juan Jose Alvarez, who was in charge of the Córdoba strategy. Everyone is aware that the campaign started “too late”, as a result of the late definition of the ballot and the double role of candidate and Minister of Economy.
an old friendship
“The campaign has to be Massa president”, they say in massismo. How this concept will be reinforced will be part of the internal debate among those who believe that the candidate must toughen up to mark a stronger leadership from which to add other actors or reinforce his moderate or center profile to mark the contrast with Milei and Bullrich. Camporism praises the “hyper-professional” virtues of the candidate’s work and his discipline. The table of the Renewing Front calls to “strengthen the candidate”, to review errors and to “get out of confinement”. “We went to retain our own and we were left with only that,” they say.
Massa called on Sunday in the bunker to form a “new majority” and summoned the moderates of JxC, especially to the radicals who suffer the contempt of Milei. Cristina Kirchner spoke along the same lines on several occasions, predicting in May that this would be a “three-thirds” election, in which the floors would weigh. They both think of a runoff, in which they hope to face Milei, and they believe there are chances of winning.
The contacts have already started. Massa activated his historic relationship with Horacio Rodriguez Larreta and dialogue with radicalism. The messages for the assembly of the “new majority” indicate that the alternative will be a path full of thorns: the head of government has no destination under the wing of Mauricio Macri, who played everything to defeat him. For the UCR, no future today with Milei, who accuses them of having been the seed of populism since times of Hipólito Yrigoyen and it tramples on its historical flags, such as university autonomy and the defense of human rights and the Trial of the Juntas. Massa believes that he can also win votes from Juan Schiaretti, which had a lean crop. This Monday, he also activated the dissemination of messages from relevant cultural figures, such as the artists Lali, Trueno and Wos, who have reached a young audience and called not to vote for Milei.
How much Cristina will weigh in this new stage is also a topic of conversation. The vice president returned from Santa Cruz and was in the Senate this Monday, where she received Wado de Pedro. In the run-up to the election, Kirchnerism discounted that, in the second half, maximum kirchner would have a greater role in the campaign. The deputy avoided getting involved until STEP due to the presence of Grabois’s ballot in the internship and the internship that La Cámpora gave in various districts of the province. He now he will have to order the Buenos Aires territory, where he rules in the PJ.
Grabois’ speech in the campaign bunker Sunday night fell like a bucket of cold water. The social leader kept his word, took the stage with Massa and promised to make his team “available” to the list of the leader of the Renewal Front. But he dedicated a good part of his speech to vindicate Cristina, to criticize the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and to mark the field for Massa, whom he never mentioned by name. Everything was out of script. Kicillof later read a speech that lasted longer than that of the presidential candidate.
Massa was this Monday at the Palacio de Hacienda, where he analyzed the fall in Argentine bonds as a market reaction to the election. His “second half” started this Monday with a drastic measure for the economy, the decision to devalue the peso by 22%, in line with what the IMF was asking for. The minister had been discussing it for weeks with his team, but he finished defining it at dawn, after the electoral result was known.
In the bunker located in the C Art Media Complex, Massa digested the results with his circle, De Pedro and Kirchner. The senior staff of Cristinismo dedicated part of the night to analyzing the results of their local bets, in municipalities such as Hurlingham, Lanús and Quilmes, and the elections in Santa Cruz, where Kirchnerism was defeated after 32 years of government. The massismo became embittered with the data from Tigre, where Malena Galmarini could not stand in his choice against Julio Zamora. Massa and Kirchner had exchanged warnings for each other’s political errors in the “headquarters.”
