“I want it to be absolutely clear: today my political career ends“. With that sentence, on Wednesday morning javier milei received a bucket of cold water: his candidate for governor of Neuquén, Carlos Eguia, decided to get out of the electoral dispute. The businessman of a media chain in the region gave the scoop in his radio editorial Against fire, when accusing – without giving names – that “they offered him 800 thousand dollars” to be the second on the ballot and before that management he said that he prioritized “his health”. “Politics is shit and it’s full of garcas“, Eguía added with the “anti-caste” language that the national deputy of La Libertad Avanza proclaims.
The scoop began to cover the websites of the local newspapers, which reported the change in the electoral board. But, like the lies, Eguía’s position had short legs: Before noon, the journalist backed down and assured that he was still in the race. “I am stronger than ever and we are going to win the province,” he said.
The sequence lasted barely two hours. When the little on-air sign lit up, at nine in the morning, Eguía gave the scoop on his resignation. “I am deeply sorry for all the people who have accompanied me but I made the decision not to participate, not to be a candidate for governor of the province of Neuquén, I prioritize my health,” said the journalist, who pointed to “the owners of the stamps.” and untied Milei. “I have decided from this moment on to dedicate myself exclusively to journalism because I insist, politics is absolute shit, it is the worst thing that exists in a person’s life“, reiterated the former candidate for deputy for the Civic Coalition.
According to his account, the situation that broke the camel’s back was an alleged bribery attempt to remove him from the center of the scene. “Tomorrow, because today I am very hot, I am going to tell you step by step what I recorded at a dinner in Buenos Aires because they offered me 800 thousand dollars to accompany a candidate, I am going to show them on the air because I am going to continue doing journalism “, he denounced in the media.
The program continued with its usual scheme. Already at 11:17, just 137 minutes after the scoop, Eguía retracted on social networks. “I am stronger than ever and we are going to win the province”, posted on his Twitter account. “I am not getting rid of my candidacy nor is anyone going to get me down, I decided to get involved to change the lives of the neighbors so that they can live with dignity,” she commented, without saying if he will make known those involved in his media complaint.
In addition, to complete, he announced that he will accompany Javier Milei in an act in the town of San Martín de los Andes on February 25. “We are going to win the province and we will achieve mayors throughout the province. The lions roar louder and louder and we feel that in each neighborhood, in each town we visit, people are convinced that we are the only alternative in NeuquénEguia wrote.
The CC’s pass to Milei’s party
It is quite common to listen to or read Eguía with a manual similar to that of Javier Milei. Insults, denigrations and an emphasis on targeting the “political caste” are some of the elements that are repeated, despite being more than a thousand kilometers away. But although they seem cut with the same scissors, the journalist did not start his political career in La Libertad Avanza, but at the hands of Elisa Carrió.
Eguía was a candidate for national deputy for the Civic-ARI Coalition in the 2021 legislative elections, which in that vote decided to separate from the PRO. Part of the CC-ARI leadership (Maximiliano Ferraro and Mariana Zuvic) traveled there and campaigned with the journalist. Even Carrió herself traveled to Villa La Angostura with the media businessman for a meeting with neighbors. “The only one who always risked it and fought the looters of the country alone, while those who today criticize her remained silent,” were the flowers that Eguía gave the former national deputy.
But the polls did not support Eguía, since he came in fourth place with 14 percent of the votes and was not enough to reach Congress. Less than a year later, when in Neuquén there was talk of maintaining a single candidacy of Together for Change for 2023, Eguía gave the note: he announced his departure from the opposition coalition and, almost simultaneously, his affinity with Milei.
Eguía is a recognized voice in Neuquén, to the point of having received the Martín Fierro de Oro, in 2012, in an award that did not take into account the journalist’s homophobic statements. “We are on a drifting ship, now it turns out that it is normal for a man to kiss another man, a woman with another woman,” he used to comment in his renowned editorial.
Already close in time, at the same time that he was a candidate for the 2021 legislative elections, the editorialist criticized the provincial Minister of Health for the delivery of tablets in the town of Plottier.
“Minister, don’t make all of us Neuquén who look like Indians look like shit, imagine what they think in Buenos Aires, that the new technology in Neuquén is having a tablet, damn it. Resign Minister, don’t make us look like assholes all the Neuquinos and don’t take more photographers, you are not a model”, she ranted in the radio commentary.
