The back room of the agreement in Pro: Macri’s move, Larreta’s reaction and Santilli’s place

2023-05-16 14:37:00

More than a gesture of unity, the decision to agree on clear rules of the game for the Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires bids between Horacio Rodriguez Larreta y Patricia Bullrich was a new attempt to try to cut with the internal open pit that crosses the party founded by Mauricio Macri and that began to be reflected, and in a worrying way for the yellow team, in the clear stagnation of Together for Change showing the latest surveys.

So it was almost urgent Mauricio Macri pulled his strings to put together breakfast that this Monday morning he brought together the two presidential candidates in the department that Mary Eugenia Vidal has in Barrio Norte, which, beyond officiating as hostess, served to equalize the goals at the Pro sand table.

It is that, in reality, the decision to define in the next 20 days through one or several surveys the candidate for Buenos Aires head of government that will take Pro to the primaries had already been taken on Monday of last week. It was at the meeting held in a house on Uriarte street at 1800, in the heart of the Palermo neighborhood, in which, in addition to yesterday’s protagonists and with Macri recently arrived from the United States, Diego Santilli, Fernando de Andreis and Cristian participated. Ritondo.

At that meeting it had also been decided release the participation of more than one candidate in the primary in Buenos Aires territory. The idea was that each presidential candidate would compete with the leader that best fit their profile.

Larreta has already decided that Santilli It will be his Buenos Aires bishop. Bullrich hasn’t anointed anyone yet, but could turn to Ritondowhich would imply that the provincial senator Joaquin de la Torre and the mayors Javier Iguacel (Captain Sarmiento) and Nestor Grindetti (Lanús) would end up getting out of contention.

However, during the last week “things happened”, as Macri would say. “There were operations that tended to ignore what was agreed last week,” they accused in the Bullrich sector, pointing their finger at the government headquarters on Uspallata street.

For this reason, at the meeting, with coffee and croissants in between, Macri ended up getting the Buenos Aires head of government the commitment to launder the agreement through a joint communiqué in which only the signatures of the two presidential candidates appeared.

Larreta resisted sharing Santilli’s candidacy with Bullrichthe Buenos Aires candidate who best measures in the polls and whom Larreta considers an asset for his presidential candidacy.

Larreta knows that the candidacy of Fernán Quirós does not start and that, in any poll, always appears behind Jorge Macrithe candidate promoted by his cousin and former president and who has the endorsement of his internal rival for the presidency.

But, in addition, when the definition is narrowed among the pre-candidates listed at this time, the agreement would be closing the way to an eventual nomination of Vidal for the head of governmenta hypothesis that the deputy had ruled out when she announced that she would not compete for the presidency.

In the Pro world it is speculated that Larreta is still excited that the former Buenos Aires governor can compete in the Federal Capital, since he considers her the best possible candidate.

“It is Macri who does not love María Eugenia”, they say in the factories of the yellow team. “He says that he offered him the candidacy ten times, actually there were three, and he refused; and that now he has already told Jorge (Macri) to play and he will not lower it ”, they add when the reason for the former president’s black ball to the national deputy is consulted.

Lastly, a neutral observer of the Buenos Aires fight also evaluated that the formalization of the announcement of how both inmates will be resolved also points to dilute the agreement that the head of government maintains on Buenos Aires soil with senator Martín Lousteauradical pre-candidate, and reason for the anger that Macri maintains with his successor in the administration of the district that gave birth to Pro.

“Although he denies it, he has an agreement with Martín and this decision forces him to have to play for the candidate who ends up deciding the party,” said a Pro leader who plays another inmate, in the interior of the country.

The Buenos Aires issue also finds Larreta giving ground. In his intimate circle, they took it upon themselves in recent days to emphasize that the Buenos Aires head of government had preferred that exit because he did not want to share Santilli, his candidate and who is the one who best measures, with his rival. “Make no mistake, Bullrich doesn’t like Diego, he wants an applicant who is more like his profile and Santilli is not,” a Buenos Aires reference clarified in dialogue with this newspaper.

Conocé The Trust Project