Axel advances elections, disobeying CFK – has a new Peronist leader been born?

There is no register at hand of any Peronist leader who would have dared to ignore the instructions of Cristina Ferenández de Kirchner in the way Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof did last Monday when he announced the provincial elections would be advanced to September 7.

Never had anybody within Peronism in general or in Buenos Aires Province in particular ever dared recently to defy the leadership of a woman who could boast a hard core of 30 percent of the Greater Buenos Aires vote.

That was not the case with Daniel Scioli, who always obeyed her instructions, nor Florencio Randazzo, who tried without luck to take a stand against the Kirchnerite youth organisation La Cámpora.

It turned out to be Kicillof, from whom independent gestures were perhaps the least expected, who took the risk of contradicting his Kirchnerite political partners who sought to have the national and provincial elections on the same day, in accordance with Peronist tradition.

With this move, announced somewhat nervously, the governor has also plunged himself into the province’s gigantic electoral system, which in keeping with Peronist needs has been united to the national calendar since the 1994 constitutional reform.

The question-mark opening up over the figure of Kicillof is whether this open defiance of his (ex-?) political boss and his former militant comrades will finally give birth to a new leadership and a new stage in Peronism, which still has not found the way to confront that unknown adversary called the libertarians.

Like any risky play, the decision has uncertain effects and could expose the governor to undesired consequences. If it turns out well, the credit will be all his but if it leads to dispersion and electoral defeat, Peronism will have to pick up the bill for not having managed to unify to face President Javier Milei.