Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Daniel Scioli met in the Senate after the deafening closing of the Unión por la Patria lists that led to the unity formula headed by Sergio Massa. It was the first time they had seen each other since December and the meeting, which lasted about forty minutes, was a message from the vice president in the midst of the escalation of tensions that Christianity has been facing against Alberto Fernández. Since the act in Aeroparque that a Christian hard core has been increasing the pressure against the president, accusing him of having “stolen” places on the lists that corresponded to the ambassador in Brazil in order to benefit Victoria Tolosa Paz and Santiago Cafiero. “Albertismo is going to have to give explanations to Scioli,” said Senator Oscar Parrilli, the vice president’s right-hand man, and referred to the President as “irresponsible.” It was in this context that CFK publicized the meeting with the former governor and highlighted, through their social networks, that they had talked “a lot, with sincerity and with the usual respect.”
The former president’s tweet was accompanied by a photo of both of them smiling at her office table: a response to another photo, taken a few hours earlier at Casa Rosada, in which the trio Sergio Massa-Agustín Rossi-Alberto Fernández appeared being applauded throughout the national cabinet. The former presidential candidate arrived at Congress after 5:00 p.m. He had arrived in the country in the morning, after a stay in Brazil with the president to celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He was returning to dismantle his campaign bunker and meet, as they had arranged on Sunday in a telephone conversation, with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Forty minutes later, he left the office and made only a brief statement: “It was a good meeting, I have never had any problems with her. She is a person with a high sense of responsibility.”
The person in charge of confirming the meeting was the vice president herself. “Just in my Senate office with Daniel Scioli. We’ve known each other for a long time… To be more precise, since 1997, when we were both National Deputies. We talked a lot, sincerely and with the usual respect. He told me that his vocation is to help and collaborate as one more comrade”, CFK reported, via Twitter, and announced that Scioli would meet the next day with the presidential candidate, Sergio Massa, at the Palacio de Hacienda. And he ended with a message that could be addressed to the entire ruling party: “To continue working, which is what must be done.”
A few hours earlier, meanwhile, the vice president had received Massa himself in her office and, in turn, another of those killed in the war who preceded the unity formula: the Interior Minister, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro. She also held a private meeting with the Buenos Aires Community Development Minister, Andrés Larroque, who yesterday announced his support for the Massa-Rossi formula. “Due to institutional, political and social responsibility with our people, Peronism has formed a unity formula that will represent us in the next elections,” said the text signed by La Patria es el Otro, the group it leads.
The sharp blows of closing lists
The CFK-Scioli photo is not innocent, but is part of the fury that a sector of Christianity has with Alberto Fernández for the way in which the final negotiations to close the lists took place. Since Monday – at the event for the recovery of one of the planes that were used for “death flights” during the dictatorship – CFK narrated the “excellent” conversation he had had with Scioli on Sunday, Kirchnerism began to to establish that the fifth place in the list of Deputies for the PBA in which Santiago Cafiero signed up was, in reality, an offer for Scioli. “He ripped him off the bench,” said the Buenos Aires Security Minister, Sergio Berni, in radio statements. The day before, in turn, the senator from Buenos Aires Teresa García had asked the chancellor and the minister of Social Development to resign their candidacies: “They do not deserve the position they are going to occupy,” she snapped at them.
They were not the only ones. In the morning, Senator Oscar Parrilli, right-hand man of the vice president who, on some occasions, acts almost as his spokesman, referred to the issue: “Albertismo is going to have to explain to Scioli,” he said, in dialogue with Futurock, and accused the president of “irresponsibility” for promoting the PASO. “In short, if everything was for two charges against national deputies, why so much damage and so much scandal?” He questioned.
In albertismo, meanwhile, they emphatically deny these accusations. “Absolutely not,” the foreign minister had said when asked, in an interview, if he had “betrayed” the ambassador in Brazil. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Juan Manuel Olmos, denied that a position had been stolen from Scioli. “In a closing of lists there are always dissatisfied. Nobody steals anything from anyone because the candidacies are built,” he said, in dialogue with LPO, who was in charge of officiating as a messenger between the three legs of the coalition the night it ended defining the unit formula.
“There was no concrete offer. It was agreed that the President would propose the candidate for Vice President, two Deputies among the first 5 in the Province of Buenos Aires and the head of the Parlasur deputies,” he explained, and said that the president had proposed to Scioli for Parlasur. “Daniel said that he supported Peronism as he has always done, but that he did not want to go headlong for Parlasur,” he recounted.
