Abad, during the launch event in Mar del Plata / Twitter
Buenos Aires radicalism decided to take the field and plant a candidate for governor in the discussion for spaces of power in Together for Change. From the platform offered by an act that took place last night in Mar el Plata, the provincial deputy Maximiliano Abad whitewashed his desire to compete for the Governor’s office.
Although Abad did not say it specifically, the references he made in his speech were unequivocal. “The Radical Civic Union wants to govern the province of Buenos Aires,” he said.
“The radicalism of the Province is convinced that if it goes well it will be decisive for the national triumph of our coalition, which we must protect, expand and strengthen,” he added.
The launch event took place at the Once Unidos club, where Abad from Mar del Plata played at home. The move had a distinctive feature: the studied absence of national space leaders. The exception was Ernesto Sanz from Mendoza, a close friend of the provincial legislator. As this newspaper already recounted, this decision was aimed at highlighting the Buenos Aires profile of the movement and placing Abad in the center of the scene.
The national presences took place virtually. Leaders such as Facundo Manes, governors Gerardo Morales, Gustavo Valdés and Rodolfo Suárez and legislators Carolina Losada, Luis Naidenoff and Mario Negri, among others, expressed their greetings and support through videos. The majority of the party superstructure of the Province sang present: 26 mayors, 17 provincial legislators and 4 national deputies participated in the launch.
VIABLE PROVINCE
“We are here because we want to end structural exclusion and the deficient State. And we are encouraged by an objective that cannot wait another minute: we need, we want and we are looking for a province of Buenos Aires that is viable, that is livable, that develops and that leads the recovery that we so badly need”, Abad harangued.
“In these almost forty years we have not been able to build the social democracy that Don Raúl Alfonsín dreamed of and that is due, to a large extent, to a virus that affected us, sometimes from the right and sometimes from the left. That virus is called populism and it always produced the same results: more poverty, more exclusion, more corruption, more institutional deterioration and more international isolation. For this reason, good politics must seek the definitive solution and oppose populism with a republican, democratic and progressive model. That is, neither more nor less, the mission that we radicals have. We want to take charge of the future,” he added.
Then he spoke of the “historical mandate” of the UCR: “that of building a true social democracy and a model of sustainable development for our country. But we can only carry out this historic mission if we manage to transform the Province. It is this district that defines the margin of action and the governability of Argentina”, he said.
“Those of us who inhabit this Province, who have lived in it since we were born, know that the situation is distressing and that the numbers do not lie. Enough of governments with a lot of stories and little politics. Enough of underestimating a society that is exhausted, overwhelmed and always subject to uncertainty”, Abad harangued.
The president of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) of the province of Buenos Aires, assured: “We are encouraged by an objective that cannot wait another minute: we need a province that is viable, that is livable, that develops and that lead the much-needed recovery.”
Finally, the man from Mar del Plata said: “We have to live in a province that had and still has efforts that condemn us to failure and the reproduction of inequalities. Much more than a century ago, this present was called false and disbelieving. Today we could update it: fallacious, insensitive and conceited,” he said in another part of his speech.
The launch of the leader from Mar del Plata occurs in tune with the wishes of other radicals to fight for the same space as the national deputy Martín Tetaz and the mayor of San Isidro, Gustavo Posse.
Also, in the midst of the advance of the PRO that has already put on the field several names that have been busy in the Province for a while, such as Diego Santilli (aligned with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta), Cristian Ritondo (who just yesterday campaigned in Mar del Plata together with María Eugenia Vidal), Néstor Grindetti (who led his own act in Pinamar), the mayor of Captain Sarmiento Javier Iguacel and the provincial senator Joaquín De la Torre.
