Cristina discussed Kicillof’s dilemma and the government’s creative accounting

Peronism plays the most important card on March 15th. It is the date of the elections to renew the leadership of the PJ of Buenos Aires, which is now in the hands of the Kirchner family through Infante Máximo. Driving is complemented by the factor that his mother practices from the Otamendi Sanatorium or from San José 1111. In a month, on February 5, provincial Peronism will close the lists for those elections that will decide the fate of national Peronism. The district is the largest in Argentina, its crisis is the crisis of Argentina and 37% of all voters vote there. On September 7, Peronism won the provincial elections and secured control of the territories. On October 26 there were midterm elections with the national ruling party, which Peronism usually lost. This result makes the party’s commitment to the future of Peronism crucial.

In these elections there are two candidates, Máximo Kirchner and Axel Kicillof himself. The two parties will spend the whole of January looking for an understanding that will prevent them from participating in the elections. Peronism has around 1.4 million members. Despite all their will, 20% of them can vote. The option seems for a few to avoid the expense and bad image of a party.

One of the reasons for this understanding could be that neither Máximo nor Axel takes the fight and that they delegate representation to pastors. like Leonardo Nardini (Malvinas Argentinas), Mariel Fernández (Moreno) or Federico Otermín (Lomas de Zamora) for Christianity and for Axelism Gabriel Katopodis (San Martín), Verónica Magario and Fernando Espinoza (La Matanza), Jorge Ferraresi (Avellaneda) or Julio Alak. It is in the interest of Peronism to achieve this unity, which can also help the government achieve balanced management and get out of the double deadlock that can lead them all to ruin.

The interest of this party would be to strengthen itself in the leadership elections. Internal partisanship tends to be deadly for parties in the fluid and polarized world of politics in this cycle and in all countries.. The electoral regulations require that the expression of minorities in parties be preserved. The only file that the parties had was the internal elections and the external and compulsory PASO.

Apart from some messianic leaders of the “new politics” who are reviving the demons of Caesarism, an evil of Hispanic political culture, there is no other agreement, but in the softened mood and polarization of public life, the results of the internal elections are deadly. Those who win crush the heads of the losers – the PASO was created to punish traitors and losers who are barred from participating. The losers line up immediately behind their own opponents.

It happened with Peronism in Buenos Aires in 2015, when Aníbal Fernández defeated Julián Domínguez and the losers withdrew support from the winner and made him lose the gubernatorial election. The national effect was the defeat of Peronism against Together for Change. In 2023, PASO was deadly for Cambiemos. Patricia Bullrich, supported by Mauricio Macri, defeated Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. The losers took Patricia’s seat and she was eliminated from the runoff as Together for Change boasted of winning the presidential election since 2021. They lost 14 percentage points of the vote in two years, just because of the dispute over the media and without governing!

If Peronism in Buenos Aires does not find an integrative solution that pacifies the struggle between Christianity and Axelism, It is divided and the division in the largest district is carried over to the national order. In the National PJ, Cristina’s authority is discussed. There are at least four lawsuits in the electoral justice system challenging his leadership based on the disqualification that accompanies the sentence he served.

The accumulation of demands created a mood within the party for intervention that could harm it even more. It is nothing new for the PJ to intervene on behalf of whoever governs. In 2005, Néstor Kirchner promoted the intervention of the National PJ in the figure of the legendary Ramón Ruiz, one of the most lively “pelados” of Peronism (he received this bargain with a national parliamentary seat). In May 2018, Luis Barrionuevo was appointed auditor of the PJ Nacional. It was governed by Mauricio Macri, who was already in the downward spiral of his government. In both cases, the Electoral Justice argued legal contradictions justifying these interventions, and it is inevitable to understand them as an advantage for Kirchner and for Macri in their relations with Peronism.

A Peronism divided as an opposition is weaker and poses as serious a problem to the system as a weak and frayed government.. It is plausible to understand the fall of Fernando de la Rúa in 2001 as a consequence of the arrest of Carlos Menem that year. He was president of the PJ and was imprisoned because of the Armas case. The disqualification and imprisonment of the opposition leader takes away the influence of every ruling party. De la Rúa served Menem for ten days from November 21 to December 21 this year.

Is a Peronist born or made? It is the dilemma of Axel Kicillof, the protagonist of Peronism’s first internal battle. Given the size of the district and the figure’s presidential aspirations, the fight with Cristinism for control of the provincial PJ could be the key to Peronism’s future. Axel is already in power in his second term, he beat Vidal and Milei three times – in 2019, 2023 and 2025 – he has no corruption legend and wants to become president. Opponents accuse him of disloyalty to his long-time godmother Cristina and his mistakes when, as minister, he defended the nationalization of Repsol’s shares in YPF, which was ultimately approved by Congress.

But does not transmit Peronism. He insists on cultivating himself as such. He must have already been convinced during nights of prayer of the Third Position, that Perón is alive, that Evita, if she were to live, would be a lottery and similar slogans. He reads Perón, but continues to convey the student image of wearing a T-shirt on official occasions and only taking photos with mothers, which is an old argument. He is the antithesis of the typical Peronism of the suburbs, a species of the genus “homo bonaerensis”. which once illustrated a treatise on Peronist anthropology: long arms that almost drag on shoes, short stature, wild expressions and a penchant for hosing down the car on Saturdays, and opportunists who adapt quickly to change, generally in favor of the winner. A Juan José Mussi, for example, who, as the Peronist mayor of the suburbs, always said that he was far from fully embodying this. “I’m black and Peronist, I must be from Boca,” he laughed. “But I’m from San Lorenzo.” He joked about a slogan for a coastal real estate agency. “I’m like Casa Sauro, it couldn’t be cheaper.” He must have been born on the coast, where there are tall Peronists with blue eyes like Lole.

Axel is affected by other common vulnerabilities of Argentine governors. There are many cases of local leaders who are perfectly present in office, orderly and efficient, as evidenced by their ability to control territory, be re-elected to office and secure loyal legacies. However, this village expertise is not replicated when it comes to the national agenda.. The accounting fiction of “the nation” is a mystery to them as they become embroiled in a national adventure. It happened to political legends – Angeloz, De la Sota, Schiaretti, Reutemann, the people of Mendoza, all with long necks, upright postures and loud honking (like geese, which they all are, whether Peronists, radicals or conservatives)But no one was successful in the national team, except José Bordón, who actually comes from Santa Fe.

The first thing a native of Buenos Aires must do, even if he was governor, is to win the sympathy of Peronism in the interior, where he hates the Peronist of the AMBA and, psychologically, must overcome this block to understand what is national. Just like his opponent Máximo Kirchner, who has never governed a territory, is a member of parliament because he is his son and only acts as a spokesman, a kind of Adorni, a mask of power, but a mask nonetheless.

The budget, which the government is hailing as historic, is another model of creative accounting. The indicators are an adjustment to reality that represent a call for reassignment of posts, which the government will do using the superpowers that the new text gives it. And of course upstairs the claim of a zero deficit. There is a lack of money to fund the ratification of the disability and college contingencies that remained in place when the cap was lifted in the House of Representatives. 11.

These fanciful calculations do not take into account the final cost of the labor reform that the government plans to discuss next February. According to the most pessimistic calculation, these costs could amount to $12 billion, according to opposition senator Jorge Capitanich. What is the government’s plan? This budget that now needs to be refinanced, or the labor reform project for which they are promising to sacrifice their lives? Who is such a budget created for? The government says this is what the creditors, the IMF and the United States are demanding. But they know better than anyone how it came to be.

In these hours, the Spanish philologist Darío Villanueva, who headed the Royal Academy, warned against the widespread error “If one thinks that words commit errors, shortcomings and evils, it is exactly the opposite: these realities exist and then they are given words to denote them.”

The official message is seduced by the possibility of installing a story in which words control the objects. They celebrate when the public adopts terms like “caste” or “zero deficit” as magical slogans. It is the consequence of following poorly translated late structuralists who discovered Indian Peronism and demagoguery in the country that invented Peronism from Switzerland, Italy or Portugal.

Villanueva, who knows Argentina well, recalled: “In the election campaign of the former President of the Argentine Republic, one of the central issues was the use of the letter e to neutralize o and a as morphemes of the two genders. The campaign became a banner in an extraordinarily aggressive way: Argentinians, everyone, etc. This man is now no longer president of Argentina and is embroiled in a gender violence lawsuit. And I ask: What is more important, the second or the first? The behavior or the letter? Obviously behavior is more important.“. (Reporting by Marisa Gallero in “El Debate”, Madrid, December 28, 2025)