Elisa Carrió announced her candidacy for president / Web
And one day, Lilita Carrió announced that she will once again be a candidate for president of Together for Change in an Open Primary in which, for now, it is not very clear how many competitors there will be. She will do so on behalf of the force that she leads, the Civic Coalition, one of the legs of the opposition alliance. “It is to guarantee unity; I do not intend to win, I intend that there is no debate to the death, ”she explained and admitted that she sees a“ wear ”of JxC for“ advancing candidacies ”.
Carrió’s is a strange syllogism. Because he assures that in Juntos there should be a proliferation of candidacies at the presidential level, but unity should be imposed on the national and provincial legislative lists. As for there to be a battle “above”, in the most stellar category, and agreements on the items that will make up the future national Congress and the provincial Legislatures.
Is it possible to break up the fight that way and not spill down? Mystery.
Carrió would thus join the batch of opposition pre-candidates that today includes the PRO Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich, the radicals Gerardo Morales and Facundo Manes and even former president Mauricio Macri himself, who continues to flirt with the idea of a new nomination , perhaps to unnerve his political partners and prevent them from taking early retirement.
QUESTIONS
It is surprising, in any case, that Lilita talks about facing Larreta, who is supposed to be her ally in the Juntos scene. Also, that she self-award the guarantee that with her nomination the unity of Juntos is preserved. Because? To represent an offer within the opposition alliance clearly linked to the moral, ethical issue? Does that mean that the rest of the applicants are not even close to representing the same thing? Is it to question Bullrich, her former friend, who insists on erasing that aura that the mayor of Buenos Aires had as a yellow “natural candidate”?
Carrió seems to have in mind what happened in 2015, when the PASO of August of that year between the partners of Juntos (at that time called Cambiemos) strengthened the alliance in the face of the October general, in which it finally prevailed in the ballotage against the ruling Peronism. He would try to repeat the effect although, a priori, the scenarios are not entirely similar.
He also seems to sense that, unlike that time, the mismanaged internal fight on this occasion could be destructive because the government’s economic mismanagement has triggered excessive expectations of premature triumph among the main opposition players.
Lilita is an expert in managing her appearances. She knows that every time she speaks she shakes the board of Juntos, which she co-founded. Yesterday she did it on Radio Miter but before that she had come out to put a certain limit on the expansive desire of PRO figures she does not trust, such as deputy Cristian Ritondo, candidate for governor. As far as is known, Carrió subtly supported Diego Santilli, Larreta’s chicken in that Buenos Aires bid.
THE NEED TO ACHIEVE CONSENSUS
According to sources from Juntos, Carrió and Jujuy’s Morales, president of radicalism, agree that the Larreta-Bullrich tension is getting out of hand for the PRO. It seems that they should tidy up a bit, find some kind of consensus to keep their forms, because this public tirade threatens the credibility of the main opposition alliance. At the time, Morales contributed his own by lowering the tone of the public clashes he had with Manes months ago, when the doctor stood as the great white hope of the UCR.
Carrió’s announcement yesterday comes to demolish another previous announcement, from 2019. It was when he warned that he was withdrawing from party politics. It was practically that he was retiring from the exercise of being on the ballot for years. Which did not imply losing influence, of course. Last year, when shady episodes plagued coalition actors, she came out to say that “if there are no fundamental agreements on conduct, decency, honesty, and transparent financing, I am going to be a candidate for president next year.” . She has complied.
THE SEARCH FOR LEGISLATIVE “UNITY”
On the other hand, the thesis that he put forward does not seem accidental regarding the fact that “the important thing is that we have unity in national legislators of the entire coalition, in provincial legislators.” It is that the Civic Coalition puts into play this year a series of legislative seats, both in the national Congress (half a dozen) and in the provinces. It intends to renew them and, if the wave is in favor, increase them. Lilita is a professional politician and she knows the logic of power: her specific weight in Juntos -governing or not- improves if her parliamentary influence is greater.
A STEP with a complete strip, from president to the last councilor, will generate a cumbersome subsequent process of merging parliamentary lists according to the coefficients that are timely arranged in the Juntos electoral board. According to this vision, the most political solution, if you will, is to negotiate among the coalition actors the conformation of the payrolls with certain criteria of internal political balances.
That requires a great degree of internal maturity that, so far, Together for Change seems incapable of offering the electorate.
