President Javier Milei would seem to have a certain fetish for Independence Day as a moment for marking milestones. Last year’s anniversary featured the signing in Tucumán with provincial governors the ‘Pacto de Mayo’ (whose very name betrays that it was planned for a previous occasion, the May 25 anniversary of the birth of nationhood). And last Wednesday’s national day was pigeonholed for what is potentially the single most decisive development in this year’s midterm campaign – a final agreement between Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party and the PRO of his 2015-2019 predecessor Mauricio Macri to join forces in a right-wing electoral alliance to oust Kirchnerite populism in the September 7 elections in Buenos Aires Province, an agreement which could equally have been reached well beforehand or a bit later, but Milei has his talisman date.
An alliance which simply had to happen because the alternative was all too visible from the 2023 gubernatorial election – the futile libertarian candidacy of Carolina Píparo against Juntos por el Cambio’s Néstor Grindetti handed that election to incumbent Governor Axel Kicillof with just 45 percent of the vote. But it took months of speculation and jockeying for the obviously inevitable to happen.
The brand-new alliance will be christened Alianza La Libertad Avanza with purple ballots (although some sources named it as Frente La Libertad Avanza – this column had not entirely clarified this point at press time), it was announced at Wednesday’s Hotel Libertador press conference. What’s in a name? In fact the label says quite a bit because it represents a minimalist concession from the libertarian purism headed by Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei clearly calling the shots. They would have preferred the original ticket of La Libertad Avanza to remove any hint of dilution but quite apart from PRO resisting such total burial, some libertarian strategists (especially those linked to star spin doctor Santiago Caputo, who was absent from the final negotiations) feel that libertarian purism will glean the 30 percent won by Milei in the two pre-run-off votes of 2023 and by Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni in last May’s City election but a broader front could be needed to topple Kicillof – the addition of the word “Alianza” is a minor concession to such thinking . As it happens, a pure La Libertad Avanza ticket grouping everything right of centre could probably have been negotiated in exchange for not challenging PRO and splitting their vote in the City but Karina Milei was never going to have anything of that.
The fact that Karina Milei at the centre of Wednesday’s photo had at her side Sebastián Pareja, the main La Libertad Avanza organiser in Buenos Aires Province, and that the alliance was sealed on the libertarian home turf of the Hotel Libertador both attest to her dominance – all joining the alliance “must defend the ideas of the national government,” insisted Pareja. While the PRO lower house caucus chief Cristian Ritondo sat on the other side of Karina Milei, almost equal importance was attached to fellow-deputy Diego Santilli and General Pueyrredón (Mar del Plata) Mayor Guillermo Montenegro, two of the most uncompromising advocates of alliance within PRO. Congress Speaker Martín Menem completed the head table.
The main obstacle to Wednesday’s agreement had come from PRO’s 13 Buenos Aires Province mayors, who had misgivings about teaming up with such an openly voracious libertarian movement and were toying with an idea also contemplated by many of their Peronist colleagues – running a separate, purely municipal ballot entirely of their own choosing while leaving all national and provincial candidates out to dry. But while some retain reservations about libertarian pledges to respect their municipal governance and disagreed with Montenegro’s proposal of almost unconditional surrender, by midweek all of them had confirmed that they would sign up to the agreement, leaving the selection of candidates in the expert hands of Karina Milei. Working out the latter is expected to go down to next Saturday’s deadline for defining lists of candidates.
It now remains to be seen what room can be found within this alliance for the Radicals, who have almost twice as many Buenos Aires Province mayors as PRO – around half of them are believed to be amenable.
The Independence Day alliance on the right leaves the Peronists playing catch up after their stab at unification at last Saturday’s Partido Justicialista Congress. They agreed in principle on an electoral alliance for the September 7 provincial elections, creating a unity panel for that purpose including sectors corresponding to party chair Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Kicillof (who seeks a broader front beyond Peronism) and 2023 presidential candidate Sergio Massa but differences persist. Despite the agglutinating factor of Peronist solidarity against Fernández de Kirchner’s house arrest, doubts persist whether her son Máximo will inherit her candidacy in the third electoral section (by far the most Peronist of Buenos Aires Province’s eight sections with almost five million voters) – Lieutenant-Governor Verónica Magario might end up as the consensus candidate. Meanwhile, not a few Peronist mayors are contemplating short purely municipal lists in order to keep out the La Cámpora militants who would be the natural choice of national party chair Fernández de Kirchner and look less likely to change their minds than their PRO counterparts. But everybody sees disunity as suicidal and push will come to shove among the Peronist sectors as surely as it has between PRO and the libertarians.
The latter may have sealed a deal in Buenos Aires Province but not all is sweetness and light at the level of the national Congress where the moderate opposition was poised to join Kirchnerism over issues such as pensions and university spending. Milei was forced to suspend his Independence Day presence in Tucumán due to the boycott of most governors although this week’s intense fogs gave him a convenient excuse. But at least he could celebrate rightist unity in the key battleground of Buenos Aires Province.
Comments