The palace disputes in the ruling party were put on the back burner due to Fabiola Yañez's serious complaint against the former president. The shock in her surroundings. The positioning of Axel Kicillof. The increasingly less silent bidding at the heart of power
“Who do you think is the leader of the opposition?”, asked the consulting firm Casa Tres in its latest study, from July. The podium was disputed by the option "no one", Axel Kicillo second, followed by Cristina Kirchner. More relegated, those consulted leaned towards Juan Grabois, Guillermo Moreno o Sergio massa, and in other responses disparate results appeared. That is to say, in the current process of atomization of Peronism and crisis of representativeness, no clear alternative of opposition to Javier Milei on the part of the PJ, a box that, clearly, the Buenos Aires governor intends to occupy.
Alberto Fernández It doesn't even appear among the most marginal options. Beaten by the Peronist leaders themselves for the inability and sloppiness with which he exercised the Presidency, relegated even during the last year of his mandate -Massa was left in charge of the government-, reproached by the majority of public opinion for the poor results of his management, with zero political capital, the former president nevertheless dealt a very hard blow to the PJ in these hours in the political crisis that has been dragging on since the effects of the failed experiment of the Frente de Todos began to be seen, with a scandal that does not register precedents, at least public, in recent history: the very serious complaint of physical and psychological violence filed by Fabiola Yanez -a certain detachment from the case- that Fernández will now have to answer in court.
The former president's entourage was shocked. Everyone, without exception, swears they knew nothing: No one, at least the political circle of trust consulted by this medium, claims to know about beatings and physical abuse. Everyone, without exception, knew about the conflicts between the couple, the toxicity that existed in Olivos and Fernández's weakness for some hobbies. Part of that recent and sordid past, apparently common to the presidential estate, was described last night by the former first lady in the exclusive interview she gave to this medium.
The political system in general, and Peronism K in particular, were also paralyzed. Fernández's ostracism - some collaborators and leaders who knew how to be very close at the time also stopped seeing him in these months, and did not even contact him these days - motivated in that sense a very rapid, overwhelming reaction of condemnation of the former president, even by Cristina Kirchner -the former president testifies this Wednesday in Comodoro Py in the trial for her attempted murder-and La Cámpora who, in other similar situations, opted for silence or less energetic expressions. One of the most emblematic cases was that of Jorge “El loco” Romero, a former Buenos Aires senator from the group founded by Maximo Kirchner, very close to driving - he was expelled -, accused in 2018 of alleged sexual abuse. More than a month ago, Mercedes Gallarreta, partner of Andrés “El Cuervo” Larroque, wrote the former senator a heartfelt message on his networks after the judge ruled on the dismissal, with a warning: “What happened was not innocent, it is time to say things publicly, it cannot be a military ordeal in a political organization”.
In the case of Fernández, his lack of political influence - a few months ago he was dismissed from the leadership of the PJ and this weekend there were versions of his eventual definitive resignation - and the seriousness of the accusation meant that not even those around him dared to defend him. publicly. But the forcefulness of such a socially reprehensible crime revived the crisis of a headless Peronism lacking leadership, and he supported Milei and his government behind a strategy that, beyond the serious warnings for the execution of his economic program and the alerts on the management control board, has worked perfectly so far: the use of that crisis in favor of the construction of an official story, and the acceleration of the end of a stage as a style of administration of power.
“Milei's figure as an interregnum grew again. It could be a break in history, a time between two systems. Everything we saw about former President Fernández impacts not only his figure, but also the system that had him as president. The end of something that was, perhaps, finished is accelerated", Assures Pablo Knopoff, director of Isonomía.
The end of an exhausted and rotten system that the President knew how to capitalize on during the campaign, and that he took advantage of in these months at the head of the Executive to execute what he himself called the most brutal adjustment plan in history. A crisis, now exacerbated by the former first lady's complaint, which also serves Milei to hide her own shortcomings.. And his own internal ones.
As it emerged in the last few hours, Milei asked behind closed doors not to alter the public agenda. “If the enemy is wrong, do not distract him”. Napoleon Bonaparte. For example, the Casa Rosada He lowered his claims about Venezuela to a minimum, and let the attention of public opinion focus purely and exclusively on Yañez's complaint against the former president. In parallel, he deployed a media battery against gender policies deployed by the previous government, with a systematic bombardment from the networks by libertarian fanatics. Additionally, the proliferation of alleged videos of dubious origin with alleged intimate scenes of the former president was encouraged. The La Libertad Avanza trolls gloated all week. For example, Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona, supervised by Sebastián Amerio, the secretary who responds to Santiago Caputo, announced that it put up for sale the building where the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity operated. A central point of the cultural war waged by the government.
Milei took advantage of the very serious scandal surrounding Fernández to disguise the deficits and exchange rate volatility related to the economic program - weakness in reserves and collapse in industrial activity, to mention just two topics, beyond the slight rebound in some sectors such as construction-, increases in utility and transportation rates, and internal bidding at the heart of his team.
In the last week there was an internal rumor of an alleged anger that the president had with a very important collaborator, due to the complaint that a top businessman had approached him with. They are, for now, just versions.
The truth is that, within the government, Caputo, the most influential advisor of the Casa Rosada, and the minister Sandra Pettovello, very close to Milei, drag an increasingly serious internal dispute. Neither of them is interested in hiding it. They throw the worst reproaches at each other. The Minister of Human Capital used that bid, rushed months ago due to some of the most notable deficiencies in her management, to get closer to Mauricio Macri, with whom he shares the enmity with the consultant. Separate note: until yesterday, the former president had been the only important leader who did not comment on Yañez's complaint.
For the President, the exclusivity of the public agenda around Fernández also served to Put in stand-by short circuits with Victoria Villarruel, just when the agenda in Congress began to be reactivated. The last sparks had to do with the formation of the bicameral intelligence commission and the reform of retirement mobility. In ten days, Ariel Lijo will have to defend his petition in the Upper House. Then it will be Manuel García-Mansilla's turn, an agenda in which the Executive - Caputo, in particular - is especially interested. In the halls of government, people are beginning to talk more and more frequently about the division between “the iron triangle” and the vice president. They say in Casa Rosada that it is a fracture that originated in the middle of the campaign, and that it had to do with a very complex, heated negotiation between Milei and Villarruel.
In the last hours, the deputy Lilia Lemoine, who daily exposes the purity of libertarian thought, criticized the vice president for her silence on the reprehensible and dangerous visit of the pro-government deputies to the genocidaires in the Ezeiza prison.
In any case, these are political discussions that are overshadowed by the enormous crisis of Peronism and Kirchnerism. This week, the former first lady's complaint was joined by a sentence of three years in prison and six years of disqualification from the exercise of public office, resolved by the Federal Oral Court 2 of Buenos Aires, against Guillermo Moreno awarded by the manipulation in INDEC statistics during his tenure as Secretary of Internal Trade. In these months, Moreno became a kind of Peronist celebrity who did not exhaust himself in the television studios, but instead sought to amalgamate the different aspects of the PJ. He met again, for example, with Máximo Kirchner.
La crisis of representativeness of Peronism For now, it does not find any figure to guide it. It is a scenario similar to that of other times. The closest, that of 2015, after the defeat of Daniel Scioli and the rush of a good part of the leadership to retire Cristina Kirchner. The former president ran in 2017, she lost, but it was enough for her to reach the Senate and from that place rebuild a force that led to Fernández as a candidate for president. Reconstruction now seems much more difficult, partly due to a change in times whose full extent has not yet been fully seen.
In this context, Kicillof is determined to lead an alternative anchored in Kirchnerism but with a vocation for breadth that the governor already exhibited in his tour of the interior, in provinces governed by other political signs, such as Chubut or Santa Fe. On Friday , the former minister was the central protagonist of the swearing-in of the new Rioja Constitution outside of Governor Ricardo Quintela, who also rushed to the presidency.
The Buenos Aires governor already has a team that works with a view to 2027, beyond the financial emergencies that management must face. He's busy with a federal strategy. He wants to position himself as the true opposition alternative to Milei. In the conference that he led after the decision of YPF and Petronas to install the LNG plant in Río Negro, he was in charge of clarifying, more than once, that his dispute was not with that province, but with the nation. During the week, in the suburbs, graffiti appeared with the legend “Milei or Axel”. One Friday a month, Gabriel Katopodis along with some mayors bring together leaders from all over the country. Although he first has to focus on next year's elections. Control of the lists last year was a true political carnage in the dispute between the governor and La Cámpora. Martin Insaurralde He had not yet been discovered on a yacht on the Spanish Costa del Sol, in the middle of the election campaign.
Milei also wants to get the most out of the province of Buenos Aires. Her sister Karina and Sebastián Pareja, in charge of the Buenos Aires army, work on that. At LLA they are excited about an outstanding performance in that district. By taking away a portion of the electorate from Peronism.