Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, during a meeting of the Justicialista party in Buenos Aires, April 21. MARIANA NEDELCU (Portal)
For the first time in more than three decades, Peronism will choose its presidential nominee in primary elections. Interior Minister Eduardo Wado de Pedro is the man chosen by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to run for the post of head of state in next October’s general elections. But first he must defeat Alberto Fernández-sponsored former governor of Buenos Aires Daniel Scioli in the August primary. The Argentine President has thus fulfilled one of his greatest wishes: to put the decision on the candidate for the successor in the hands of the Peronist electorate.
De Pedro made his candidacy official this Thursday. “I love my country deeply. It is necessary to return to represent and defend the federal country. Let’s regain the hope and pride of being Argentinian,” the interior minister tweeted along with a campaign video.
He will be joined by the governor of the province of Tucumán, Juan Manzur, as a candidate for the vice presidency in the votes for the primary elections on August 13. De Pedro, 46, is the son of victims of Argentina’s dictatorship and began his militant activities in human rights organizations before making the leap into politics. Manzur, on the other hand, has a conservative profile, best known for his opposition to legalizing abortion, and embodies the territorial power of the Peronist governors, who are very powerful in the so-called Great North.
I deeply love my country.
It is necessary to return to represent and defend the federal country.
Let’s regain the hope and pride of being Argentinian.
I want to be your president, the president of all Argentine families. pic.twitter.com/MpGfhrUT09— Wado de Pedro 🇦🇷 (@wadodecorrido) June 22, 2023
Kirchner put pressure on Scioli’s environment to give up his candidacy. Economy Minister Sergio Massa, another great reference of this political movement, also tried to convince him. Both failed. Last week, as the deadline for presenting the electoral alliances expired, the former motorboating champion reiterated his desire to stay in the race.
In the last chunk of his tenure, Fernández’s image is in tatters, polls indicate opposition is close to 70%, and his share of power is minimal. However, Scioli’s decision gave him an unexpected victory against his vice president, with whom he does not speak.
The challenge of the ex-governor of Buenos Aires is also a sign of the growing weakness of Kirchner, who has decided and destroyed the Peronist presidential candidatures of the last decade at will. In 2011, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ran for a second term, which she won with 54% of the vote. In 2015, he appointed former Buenos Aires governor Daniel Scioli, defeated by Mauricio Macri; Four years later, he pushed through Alberto Fernández in a formula that provided her as vice president and returned to power.
After Kirchner was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption, she announced she would no longer run for president. The base’s appeals could not change their minds. The formula announced this Thursday also buries Massa’s presidential ambitions for 2023. During the negotiations, the economy minister warned that he would not run if he had to face the primaries, and he kept his word. Nevertheless, from the Palacio de Hacienda he will play a key role in the election campaign: the direction of the economy will be a decisive factor in the final outcome of Peronism in the elections.
The two Peronist candidates tell stories of resilience. De Pedro was a year and a half when his mother put him in a bathtub and used herself as a shield from the military bullets that eventually killed them in the house where they lived. He survived but was handed over to a repressive couple and spent three months with them until his family managed to get him back. Adding to his traumatic past is his struggle with a stutter that forced him to hold back for years, but that gradually changed. Scioli lost an arm in a dramatic boating accident after becoming world champion in the sport. The episode did not disappoint, but he always presented it as an example of his ability to overcome adversity.
According to the polls, De Pedro starts as a favorite against Scioli. But both are bearing the brunt of this government’s turbulent political and economic leadership, which has been marred by power struggles and 114% inflation. To date, polls suggest that even the combined total of both candidatures would fall short of that of the opposition coalition Together for Change and also Javier Milei, a candidate from the far-right La Libertad Avanza party.
The violent detention that Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich have been waging for months for leading the United for Change presidential election has caused significant attrition in the centre-right opposition coalition these months led used to be the undisputed winner and is now almost on a par with Kirchnerism and Milei. The struggle in Peronism has only just become official.
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