Peronist Primaries
Massa’s Challenge and Candidate Grabois’ Goal
Juan Grabois was left in a strange position, to say the least, when it became known that the Unión por la Patria (UxP) ticket would be headed by Sergio Massa. The social leader had withdrawn his candidacy hours before to give support to the Wado De Pedro-Juan Manzur formula, which was the one that was considered as confirmed in the media but did not have the public support of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK), nor governors and main leaders of the ruling party.
When the Twitter account of UxP confirmed that the unity candidacy of Peronism was going to be Sergio Massa-Agustín Rossi on Friday night, less than 24 hours before registration closed, Grabois immediately announced that he would not withdraw his candidacy: “We are going to keep our word. The candidate is Sergio Tomás Massa, we will not withdraw.”
In 24 hours, the Frente Patria Grande gathered 35,000 signatures to present his candidacy for the “Just and Sovereign” coalition which he will lead together with the social activist and CONICET researcher, Paula Abal Medina.
Unlike what happened with Daniel Scioli’s candidacy, this time the structure of Unión por la Patria did not hinder the presentation of a PASO (non-binding primary) and allowed the Grabois-Abal Medina formula to participate in the PASO without all the candidate sections. The unknown will be whether it will be allowed to have a list of candidates or it will go with a short list.
Why did the UxP leadership allow the PASO when they resisted it before?
A quick reading suggests that unlike what happened with an eventual PASO between Scioli and Wado de Pedro, Grabois and Massa do not have much voter overlap: most likely, Cristina’s “hardcore” voters will vote for Sergio Massa out of their organizational commitment and will look for justifications and rationales to convince themselves and then convince the rest.
It will be a vote loaded with pragmatism and a bit of tearfulness, especially after the failed candidacy of a “pure” Kirchnerist like Wado, “son of the decimated generation” (literally, since he is the son of disappeared people) and who would have been the first from the heart of the militant Kirchnerist movement in a presidential election since the election won by CFK in 2011.
The first problem with this candidacy is that although the votes of Cristina guarantee a strong starting point, one of the lessons learned from 2015 is that it is very difficult to call on people to vote for a project that the militancy does not feel is their own. Going to vote and relying on a very probable safeguard in the province of Buenos Aires will hardly broaden horizons outside the hardcore base. That is where the candidacy of Juan Grabois can function as a “barrier of containment on the left.”
The voters of this segment, who see Massa as a tactical ally but not a leader who can carry forward the social transformations that the country needs to reduce inequalities, will support Justa y Soberana in a PASO with a good chance of victory for Grabois.
Massa has a month and a half to show that he is close to CFK and her ideas in order to win over the enthusiasm of the militancy that responds to the Vice President. He will surely compete with an increasingly less moderate Larreta. But many will not forget his past in which he promised to “imprison the corrupt Kirchnerists” and his consecutive meetings with US ambassadors (revealed by Santiago O’Donell in the books Argenleaks and Politileaks) in which he resentfully repeated that “Kirchnerism was finished.”
The dilemma: Possibility or weakness?
This PASO strategy that UxP will have awakens several analyses in the Kirchnerist universe. One of them argues that it is not very strategic to go with two candidates in an election that Peronism has a high chance of losing.
What this analysis doesn’t take into account is the political project that is being supported by Sergio Massa’s candidacy. This is a candidate who is supported by the governors, concentrated economic groups, the media, and the International Monetary Fund; in addition to the scheme represented by the Vice President of the nation with her militancy, mayors and the province of Buenos Aires.
CFK has been insisting in her public interventions that it is necessary to clearly discuss the government program that Peronism will take to the elections. Frente Patria Grande has been working on a program that can overcome the conditions imposed by the veritable co-government with the IMF. Kirchnerism itself had questioned this position with regards to the IMF and it generated significant discord within Frente de Todos when Alberto Fernández announced the agreement in January 2022.
The program of Grabois’ candidacy is summarized in the “Land, Roof and Work” agenda. The details of this program range from housing for those sectors that do not have a roof over their heads, land for workers in the popular economy, formal recognition and integration for rural workers and those who recycle materials for a living of the Excluded Workers’ Movement (MTE).
These social sectors, as Grabois himself has repeated several times, are not willing to vote for a candidate they do not feel represented by, even if he has Cristina’s support, and would even be more likely to vote for Milei or a different candidate.
There is another element to take into account: the militancy that supports and promotes the founder of the MTE has been working for this project for more than a year when he decided to be a candidate. Ofelia Fernández announced through a video on social networks that she was not going to renew her seat as legislator for CABA with the following words: “We have to discuss the direction of the policies more than the positions” and added that “there is nothing more powerful than a convinced militant.”
Thus, Peronism will have PASO for the first time since the existence of the law in 2011. It is difficult to think that a candidate with the whole structure of Peronism in the provinces behind him and the tacit support of the leader with the most votes since the return of democracy will not be victorious.
The “markets” have maintained for several weeks a truce with Massa, which has kept the exchange rate of the parallel dollar in relative stability, rising below the monthly inflation. It is likely that the announcement of his candidacy will keep the dollar around 500 pesos at least until August 14.
In the event of winning, the leader of the Frente Renovador will have to take a unity photograph with the social leader that publicly criticized him on several occasions and incorporate his Land, Housing and Work agenda to the October elections in which he will face a possible second round with Patricia Bullrich, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta or a deflated Javier Milei.
This article was originally published in Spanish at ARG Medios.
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