Cristina candidate, Sergio candidate

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner may well have embarked upon a path which will lead to her presidential run. Sergio Massa, looking further ahead, maintains that he will not run. But if his economic experiment succeeds, he may become the natural Frente de To

“Cristina with Wado as the presidential ticket and Kicillof as the gubernatorial candidate for Buenos Aires Province seems a probable trio.”

“Perhaps the Kirchnerite 2023 presidential ticket may end up essentially inverting 2019. Instead of having Cristina as the running-mate of a moderate candidate, next year could see a role reversal.”

The Kirchnerite critique of President Alberto Fernández’s government omits how conditioned it is by reality. It establishes limitations very different to those seen during the first three Kirchner presidencies. These include the impoverishment produced by the four years of Mauricio Macri’s government, as well as Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s second term when the deterioration was already evident – otherwise they would never have lost the 2015 election against Macri.

From 2003 to 2013 – an entire decade – Argentina’s opposition was totally fragmented, while Alberto Fernández has had to govern against the Juntos por el Cambio coalition maintaining a 40-percent floor of the national vote, even in defeat. A very different situation to 2011, when the rival candidate with the most votes was the socialist politician Hermes Binner with only 17 percent. The other votes went to Ricardo Alfonsín with 11 percent, Alberto Rodríguez Saá with eight percent, Eduardo Duhalde with six percent and Jorge Altamira and Elisa Carrió with two percent each.

The first contradiction arising from analysis is that if in 2019 Cristina Fernández Kirchner chose somebody different to top her ticket, it was because she herself would not have won or would not have been able to govern subsequently. Alberto Fernández should not be asked to act as if he were Cristina. Another contradiction resides in that if Cristina is considered the desirable presidential candidate for 2023 (when her own evaluation reached the opposite conclusion in 2019), that would only be possible if the four years of Alberto Fernández had operated as a beneficial period of transition for her image and/ or the economic future of Argentina. That would make the country easier to govern. Only the latter could be arguable in the event of a more promising future, not being the work of Alberto Fernández but a stroke of luck in a context without a pandemic (and with no war either) and with Vaca Muerta’s shale up and running plus lithium and mining online, but even in that case this would be recognising that good fortune eluded the current president. He has had to cope with greater constraints.

Journalist Horacio Verbitsky recently commented during an interview with Radio Perfil that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner knows better than anybody else that, without improvements in the personal economy of the voters, no candidate from the ruling Frente de Todos coalition – including herself – could triumph in next year’s elections.

But it is probable that the situation within the ruling coalition leaves Cristina with no other alternative than to be the candidate, even knowing that she is going to lose upfront. Public presentations like the November 17 rally in La Plata would end up damaging her relationship with her followers and the officials who depend on her to carry on if they generate expectations which are not subsequently satisfied.

Having said: “I’ll do what I have to do” and “everything in due measure and harmoniously,” the vice-president’s adherents were induced to interpret that she would be a candidate.

Those expectations have a certain logic wihin her own political camp because they do not feel represented by an indecisive Alberto Fernández, nor by the “rightwing” (as they put it) ideology of Sergio Massa. That leaves Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof and Interior Minister Eduardo ‘Wado’ de Pedro (the only two leaders joining Cristina on the stage at her La Plata rally), and one of them will need to be the gubernatorial candidate in the region’s key battleground.

Perhaps the Kirchnerite 2023 presidential ticket may end up essentially inverting 2019. Instead of having Fernández de Kirchner as the running-mate of a moderate presidential candidate, next year could see a role reversal, with the running-mate playing the role of moderate. In that case, Wado de Pedro would respond to that profile very fittingly.

Social leader and lawyer Juan Grabois has been accompanying De Pedro on campaign swings in various provinces for some months now. They were recently in Chaco and Corrientes opening the Fourth Asamblea por un Desarrollo Integral para una Argentina Humana y Federal (“Assembly for the Integral Development of a Humane and Federal Argentina”). Grabois could be the confrontational candidate to complement a moderate of some kind.

That too would be the profile of Kicillof, a politician with much more knowledge and experience of public administration in the two most delicate state posts after the Presidency: national economy minister and Buenos Aires Province governor. Kicillof seems the most logical candidate to seek re-election in the province he has governed since 2019 despite other politicians with credentials being interested in occupying his place. The appearance of embezzlement denunciations against his provincial security minister, Sergio Berni, is rumoured to be “friendly fire” aimed at Kicillof himself.

Cristina with Wado as the presidential ticket and Kicillof as the gubernatorial candidate for Buenos Aires Province seems a probable trio. Should Fernández de Kirchner finally head the presidential ticket and win, her vicepresident would not only be important in the 20232027 presidential term, including as a possible replacement in any upheaval, but also for the 2027-2031 term since Cristina could not be re-elected in 2027 after having formed part of the ruling presidential ticket for two consecutive terms (the best case scenario for her and her followers).

On the night he defeated incumbent leader Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s run-off, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva donned a cap reading “Cristina 2023.” There is no ingenuity when you have Lula’s level of experience.