Recent statements by Ricardo Lorenzetti, the most veteran Supreme Court justice, implying that Argentina’s highest tribunal should confirm the corruption conviction and political disqualification of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner before the midterm elections, have added an extra component to the sense of obsolescence emanating from Kirchnerism due to its erosion from a sum of different internal sources during a continuous exposure to the passage of time. This is confirmed by Fernández de Kirchner’s controversial accession to the Partido Justicialista chair and her inconveniences in imposing her authority over most governors – starting with Axel Kicillof in Buenos Aires Province.
Fernández de Kirchner’s difficulties also reflect the limitations Peronism faces in adapting to modern times, something making it increasingly difficult to mix oil and water, a characteristic which has made it the country’s majority political movement very comfortably for decades by combining the popular conservatism of inland provinces with the progressive Buenos Aires half of the country.
Cristina and also Néstor Kirchner (as a La Plata University graduate, despite his Santa Cruz birth) represented the latter sector and Carlos Menem popular conservatism, with only Juan Domingo Perón apparently able to amalgamate both, not without difficulties and sometimes violently.
Aware that without that component Peronism risked losing its broad majority, Fernández de Kirchner twice picked presidential candidates representing that popular conservatism of Menem: Daniel Scioli and Sergio Massa, the former recruited into politics together with Ramón ‘Palito’ Ortega directly by the ex-president and the latter who began with 1990s militancy in the Ucedé centre-right before joining Menem.
But the political map was changed, in part due to the failure of the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Alberto Fernández, together with Javier Milei’s invasion of that popular conservatism, something initially attempted by Mauricio Macri but later abandoned in order to ally with Radicalism and even Elisa Carrió, shifting to anti-Peronism and his own elitist nature in the face of the authentically proletarian origins of Milei, also the child of a bus-driver – fragmenting perhaps forever the possibility of simultaneously retaining those two sectors within the same party.
The popular conservative Peronism has already been appropriated for La Libertad Avanza (LLA) with Scioli and Carlos Menem’s nephews joining the government, thus bringing that Peronism closer to Milei. Symptomatic is the passage to LLA of PRO’s Peronists like Diego Santilli and not their republicans who continue viewing the libertarians with ontological mistrust.
While this is happening in front of their eyes, Fernández de Kirchner and her La Cámpora political youth organisation believe that society will return to its arms when weary of believing in Milei and confirming that their standard of living is not improving without understanding that the President’s high popularity, despite persistently falling consumption, proves that much of society is ready to suffer anything rather than have Kirchnerism back.
The person who does perceive this is Kicillof, as immortalised by his phrase of composing “new songs,” anticipating what would end up being the governor’s separation from Kirchnerism and his bid to renew that political movement via its progressive Buenos Aires half whose geographical and ideological overlap with Kirchnerism dictates passing the latter into retirement in order to occupy that common space. Kicillof cannot be the pro-market Trojan horse of Fernández de Kirchner like Sciolli, Alberto Fernández and Massa, changing so that nothing changes in order to freeze Argentina in time in 2011, the last election which Kirchnerism won on the back of a flourishing economy.
Kicillof – who even shares his surname beginning with the letter “K” as an involuntary reminder of being a political product of Kirchnerism – really needs to create new songs, fundamentally via an economic doctrine which not only transcends a possible social fatigue with the libertarians by 2027 but also with the Kirchnerism from which it originated. He does not lack knowledge of the subject, having just re-edited a corrected and expanded version of his various books on economics dedicated to his idol John Maynard Keynes, entitled Volver a Keynes. Fundamentos de la Teoría general de la ocupación, el interés y el dinero (“Returning to Leynes: Grounds of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”).
After the presidency of an economist like Milei, society will demand more of the same. Should the La Libertad Avanza leader sustain economic growth, demands for secondary reforms for development will appear in order for Milei himself to be a candidate for re-election. And should Milei’s economy fail to satisfy, society will reclaim corrections. But in all cases the field of discussion would be economic because such are the characteristics of the current president’s term.
The emergence of Perón in 1945 also had an economic basis for producing development when Argentina, at that time, was not a country which would have caused his task of making the economy grow to fail. In other words, it would not necessarily be Milei’s failure in his specialty as an “expert in growth with or without money” which could generate in society the desire for change towards a second phase of a virtuous process.
Kirchnerism has no lyrics for its new songs because every intervention by Fernández de Kirchner against Milei is always geared to the economic terrain but from the perspective of his collapse and not improving on his achievements.
Kicillof recently met with a historic progressive Radical leader in Buenos Aires Province, Federico Storani, sending the first signal of a pluralistic anti-Milei progressive front like Lula in Brazil, gathering allies to defeat Jair Bolsonaro. Plenty of ground still to be covered – for example, finding somebody who could be the equivalent of Geraldo Alckmin, the representative of the right accompanying Lula on the presidential ticket.
In a country where the polarisation will end up being between popular conservatives and progressive republicans, Kicillof should add someone from PRO or the former Juntos por el Cambio coalition to his eventual presidential ticket like, for example, the Governors Ignacio Torres (Chubut) or Maximiliano Pullaro (Santa Fe).
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