As the closing of the lists approaches, the “Fight and return” operation to break the “proscription” of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner begins to take off. The militant plenary session in Avellaneda was the starting point and since then the Kirchnerist leadership has been searching for strategies to reconnect with a demobilized – and, at times, confused – militancy, based on the fact that without street pressure the firm condemnation of the vice president is only a matter of time. Some are pressing for her candidacy, others are fighting for her to be the great voter, but for all of them the goal is the same: for the vice president to regain political centrality and, in turn, to do so with a mobilized crowd behind her. . Along the same lines, although in a different tune, CFK is also fighting to recover its centrality as leader of the Frente de Todos, multiplying its public appearances. After the act in Río Negro, the summit of the Puebla Group on Tuesday will be his stellar reappearance, not only because of the support that the main leaders of the region will give him, but also because of the militant presence that will be organized outside the CCK.
Just like last week –first with the appearance of the vice president in Río Negro and later with the torrid militant plenary session in Avellaneda–, it will be an act divided into several movements. First, CFK’s public reappearance at the Kirchner Cultural Center within the framework of the III International Forum for Human Rights. There, the vice president will close the meeting “Popular will and democracy: From the military party to the judicial party, threats to democracy”, in which international leaders such as Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will participate (Spain) and Ernesto Samper (Colombia). The activity will revolve around lawfare in the region and CFK is expected to ratify the sentence that it had left last week in Viedma: “Their only objective (by the Judiciary) is the proscription.”
In parallel, the “CFK2023” campaign command works to deepen the fight plan that allows the vice president to be the candidate for president of Peronism. One of the main promoters of CFK’s candidacy is the official flamethrower of Christianity in the open war with Alberto Fernández, Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque. He is also accompanied by the usual diners at the “Ensenada table”: Governor Axel Kicillof, mayors such as Mario Secco and Jorge Ferraresi, union leaders such as Hugo Yasky and Vanesa Siley, and numerous Buenos Aires leaders such as Carlos Bianco, Teresa García, Walter Correa, among others. The muscle, however, is that of the organizations grouped in La Patria es el Otro, that space that Larroque was putting together with various K-based organizations that had been left out of the reference space of La Cámpora. And it is that Máximo Kirchner’s orga has been in a trap for some time, with the diaspora of his main referents in different executive positions and a general confusion of the militancy about the role that it occupies within the government alliance itself.
The leadership observes with concern the state of general demobilization that exists in the bases. “There is an inbreeding that is taking us far away from everything,” complains a Buenos Aires leader, who, like many, observes how the distance between the leadership of the “orgas” and the bases is increasing. In the militant plenary in Avellaneda, a claim was heard a lot: “We have to stop talking to ourselves, we have to return to the territory.” This decoupling constitutes one of the main problems in the plan to combat CFK’s ban. “This is not resolved in the courts, it is resolved in the street. We have to make them shit scared, it’s the only way,” explains a Buenos Aires official.
Beyond the claims, a large part of the Kirchnerist leadership was very satisfied with the call that the plenary had – a total of 20 thousand people participated despite the 40 degrees in the shade -, so the objective now is to keep alive the participation and activism of the militancy. In the last meeting that was held in Ensenada, the CFK campaign command decided to start multiplying the plenary experience in different parts of the country. That is to say: federalize the plan of struggle and organize acts and militant meetings in the NOA, the NEA and Patagonia. The first will be during the first half of April in Chaco, the land of Jorge “Coqui” Capitanich, one of the possible Kirchner candidates in the event that CFK ends up declining his candidacy.
Beyond the federal agenda, all the political muscle of the Kirchner militancy is concentrated on March 24. The whole week will be full of high-voltage political activities, going through CFK’s speech on Tuesday and the various events and discussions framed in the demand for “Memory, Truth and Justice”, but the icing on the cake will be the Day of Memory. After the discomfort expressed by human rights organizations at the idea of a sector of Kirchnerism to take advantage of the date to protest against CFK’s ban – Estela de Carlotto herself had to go out and ask “not to mix” -, it was decided that He would only leave the former ESMA to Plaza de Mayo. Thus, the leadership completely ruled out a claim that had arisen from some sectors of the militancy to mobilize “from the Plaza to the Courts.” “On the 24th the slogans of the 24th have to be there,” said a Kirchnerist leader who has been driving, for months, the clamor for the candidacy of the vice president.
There was an expectation that, within the framework of the International Human Rights Forum, the vice president would participate in the closing colloquium that will be held on the 23rd at the ESMA Memory Space. But, finally, it ended up setting her participation for Tuesday in the framework of the Puebla Group meeting at the CCK. Although it will not be as massive as the call that is being organized for the 24th, the vice environment will seek to mobilize on Tuesday. The idea is to place a giant screen outside the CCK so that the militancy – organic and inorganic – can follow it from outside and, if they want it, greet them when the meeting ends.
Although it was defined that he would not go to court on the 24th, Kirchnerism is already preparing its alternative for April 13. It will be a great mobilization that, 7 years after CFK was summoned to testify by Judge Claudio Bonadio in the future dollar case, it will seek to forcefully raise the claim against its ban. Afterwards, the idea is that every important date – such as May 1 or May 25 – an activity is organized that helps create the conditions for CFK to be a candidate. There isn’t much time left either. It went unnoticed, but one of the vice president’s closest figures, Senator Oscar Parrilli, gave an ultimatum a few days ago: “Before the lists are presented, Cristina has to be acquitted.”
