By order of Mauricio Macri, the leadership of the Buenos Aires PRO was emptied to force internal elections. 24 of the 33 members of the leadership resigned, to force the current president, Daniela Reich, to step aside and that a new leadership can assume, headed by Cristian Ritondo. The strategy was developed in a meeting between the former president and governors and mayors from which the bullrichistas were excluded. They reacted in this way to a meeting organized by Patricia Bullrich from the leadership of the Buenos Aires PRO with Karina Milei’s owner in Buenos Aires territory, Sebastián Pareja, which even included a photo. Macri is determined to stop the Security Minister’s strategy of merging the spaces and limit his influence in the party as much as possible. “Today the PRO must interpret the changes in the province, the territorial realities,” Ritondo remarked. Meanwhile, Reich resists calling elections, for the moment.
As this newspaper reported, Macri began to move as soon as he took office as president of the PRO to limit Bullrich’s influence in the party at all levels and scupper his plan for a merger of the PRO with La Libertad Avanza. Another question will be whether, later, next year, an electoral alliance is discussed, but the former president wants it to be on his terms. He spoke about this in a meeting he had with the PRO governors and some mayors, among them, that of Vicente López, Soledad Martínez, and that of Mar del Plata, Guillermo Montenegro. to the conclave Damián Arabia, Bullrich’s lieutenant, was not invited, even though he is part of the national PRO leadership. The objective was not to advance the move to bullrichismo, nor to Karina Milei.
At that meeting, in which everyone agreed to reject the merger proposed by Bullrich (some, like the governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, later did so before the cameras), A move that the Minister of Security had made was commented on: It was a meeting in which the mayor of Tres de Febrero, Diego Valenzuela, who is married to the current president of the Buenos Aires PRO, Bullrich herself, and on the other side Sebastián Pareja, who is the owner of Karina Milei in the province of Buenos Aires. Everyone who met with Macri saw it as the first advance to try to merge the spaces
From there, came Macri’s counterattack, which – they say in the PRO – was also orchestrated with the leaders who respond to Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, such as Silvia Lospennato. In a single movement, 24 of its 33 members resigned from leadershipwhich left her virtually headless (she was left with less than a third of the representatives) in search of internal elections being called.
The resignations included the mayor of Vicente López and that of Mar del Plata, present at the meeting with Macri, but also Cristian Ritondo, Diego Santilli, and the former mayor Martín Yeza. In the text they presented, they stated: “The undersigned, members of the Provincial Board of Directors, hereby come to communicate that we have presented our resignation from our respective party positions. for personal and political reasons that prevent us from continuing with the originally assumed commitment. And he continues: “We understand that there is a new political and social scenario in our country with direct impact on our Province that forces us, as leaders, to commit to reformulating our actions and giving a response in line with what our people ask and expect.” It is a subtle – or not so subtle – way of asking Reich to step aside.
In Macrismo, they considered that this is the next logical step after the departure of such a large group of leaders that they withdrew confidence in him and that was expanded on Friday: Ritondo negotiated with Javier Iguacel – former ally of Bullrich – so that joins the winning team. “They are all lined up behind Macri. They will have no choice but to call internal elections. And they will be the same as the national ones: there will be a single list headed by Ritondo“, said the macristas. Meanwhile, from the provincial leadership, which answers to Bullrich, they refused for the moment to make the call.
Meanwhile, Ritondo came out to talk about his possible assumption as head of the Buenos Aires PRO and explained that the mass resignation sought to make it clear that “this change not only seeks to recover the identity of the space, but also better reflect the results of the last elections so that no sector is underrepresented”. And he highlighted that, among those promoting a renewal of the leadership of the Bonarense PRO, there are 12 of the 14 mayors of the PRO, as well as councilors, provincial legislators and national deputies. It was a way to make it clear, in case there were any doubts, that they already have everyone aligned on their side.
“We are in a new stage within the PRO and I am one of those who thinks thatThe province of Buenos Aires must play a leading role in this process of strengthening the party.”Ritondo highlighted in line with what Macri proposes: that first the PRO must be strengthened to, in any case, then negotiate some type of electoral agreement with Milei in 2025. “We are working with the Mauritius leadership at the head of the party, to recover our identity, strengthen the space; Mauricio Macri was the only one who 20 years ago proposed a different model of country, modern, different from Kirchnerism,” Ritondo remarked.
