Chief of Staff Juan Manzur has stepped aside from the race for the presidential elections next October in Argentina. The veteran Peronist doctor and politician is giving up his position to Agustín Rossi to return to his province, northern Tucumán, to pursue the campaign for provincial governorship, where he will run as a candidate for lieutenant governor in the formula Osvaldo Jaldo will compete. Rossi takes office on Wednesday, after a little more than half a year at the head of the secret services.
Manzur was elected governor of Tucumán in 2015 and re-elected in 2019, but left office two years later to join President Alberto Fernández as a key figure in the reshuffled mid-term cabinet. Previously, he headed the Ministry of Health on behalf of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. His return to Tucumán is part of the Peronist strategy to keep this province, the most populous in northern Argentina and the sixth largest in the country.
“I want my first words to be thank you [a Manzur] for accompanying me the whole time; They have done it loyally and with great strength, following the slogans of unity, growth and development, making our efforts for the Norte Grande to come out of the shift,” Fernández said in his last public act.
Rossi, 63, becomes head of cabinet as the name of the consensus between the three main forces of the Peronist coalition Frente de Todos: the justicialismo, now led by Alberto Fernández, the Kirchnerism, led by the vice president, and the massismo, which is reacting to Economy Minister Sergio Massa.
Rossi chaired the Kirchnerist bench in the House of Representatives for more than a decade and also served as defense secretary during part of Cristina Kirchner’s second term. Despite his closeness to the former president, Rossi has also earned Fernández’s trust, which now puts him in a position of great publicity. It will be up to him to coordinate management and defend it in the final months of a term in which the President arrives with very low popularity ratings and an economy hit by inflation nearing 95%.
Rossi must also mediate between the President and his Vice President. The visible differences between the two will be put to another litmus test on Thursday when Fernández’s polling table convenes. Cristina Kirchner has already announced that she will not be attending, nor will her son, Deputy Máximo Kirchner. He will be replaced by Interior Minister Eduardo Wado de Pedro, who had an important argument with the President last week.
Despite all the internal tensions, the governing coalition is unbroken and the dispute over the presidential candidacy remains behind closed doors.
Opposition primaries
In the large opposition bloc “Together for Change” the struggle for leadership has more and more names. Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich of the Republican proposal party were the first to publicize their candidacy. The other major partner in the coalition, the current governor of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, wants to compete with radicalism. They were joined last week by minority party Coalición Cívica’s Elisa Carrió and it remains to be seen whether former President Mauricio Macri will finally seek a second term after losing to Fernández four years ago.
Candidates for the presidency will be decided in the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections that will be held in August.
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