Judging by what has happened in the past days, and especially over the weekend, La Plata’s election is considered one of the hottest in the province. Mayor Julio Jarro, as denounced by his opponents, monopolizes the use of public spaces, removing and tearing up posters of his rivals and using municipal employees to prevent illegal and illegal hardline practices. Local sources attribute this to internal tension and Alak’s growth.
Garro, from Juntos por el Cambio, holds to his left the tickets of Diego Santilli and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta who, according to most polls, appear lower than their rivals Nestor Grindetti and Patricia Bullrich respectively. No one knows for sure if those numbers really pay off his inner nemesis, Juan Pablo Alan. But they seem to have what experts call “truth effects”: when you believe in something and actually act on it.
hardened response
“As the JxC government obstructed carrying out legal missionary activities on the public highway, more than three thousand combatants visited more than 80,000 residents of the metropolitan area and 24 towns and neighborhoods of La Plata to bring a pamphlet with the proposals of the Minister of Justice and the candidate for mayor, Julio Alac,” the former mayor’s campaign said, through a press release.
The text asserts that “in view of the impossibility of erecting urban parades and signs, which are permanently demolished, we today organize ourselves and go out in droves in all neighborhoods to ring bells, talk with neighbors and collect complaints about deficiencies in works and services affecting their daily lives.”
She adds that “during the four periods of Julio Alaca’s rule in La Plata, there was a time of public freedoms and political tolerance, in which all political forces participated and appreciated, and which today seem to have been erased from the coexistence rules of a city born as a ‘symbol of national unity,’ as Dardo Rocha said at the laying of the foundation stone, on November 19, 1882.” On the contrary, today the entire central flowerbed of Avenida Circunvalación is filled with Garro posters. “These other candidates, for some reason, don’t last,” Alakstas points out wryly.
The climate in the local Peronites is one of optimism and enthusiasm. Alak has internal rivals, such as Gastón Castagneto and Guillermo Escudero, but the tone of disagreement is respectful, unlike what happens in the other coalition. But, in particular, in contrast to what happened in Peronism itself during the past ten years, where the current Minister of Culture of the province, dean of the press of the UNLP and reference of the local La Cámpora, Florencia Santot, and the Albertine Victoria Tolosa Paz, conducted a confrontation that ended with the opening of the city’s gates to Jarrow.
Castagneto participated in a training for public prosecutors, which brought together about 1,500 people, and held a meeting with members of Paraguayan society.
“We don’t look at the polls so much, but we feel the spirit of every political force on the street, the faces, the tones. At this level, we are better than them,” said one fighter.
Julio “El Turco” Alac was the mayor of the regional capital for four terms, between 1991 and 2007, when he was defeated by Pablo Bruera in his colleagues. Since then he has held various executive positions. Today he is the Minister of Justice of the Province of Buenos Aires. From this position, he built a very good relationship with Axel Kiselov, who asked him to play for the restoration of the city.
The governor understands that La Plata is one of the districts in which Peronism is far from its electoral ceiling, and it can and must grow, to win the local administration after eight years and contribute to a large influx of the classes of governor and president.
Too stressed?
In the past weeks, the debate between Garou, Allan and their supporters has moved from the private sphere of municipal offices to the media. Jarrow annulled the political contracts of the relatives and leaders of the Alan space, all for amounts of more than 250,000 pesos per month, provoking an angry reaction from his beneficiaries.
“Do what you want,” they say, he tells the mayor, “but don’t expect me to throw the party for you.” It didn’t take long for Garro’s decision return to reach, in this case, HCD, where other inside line advisors broke the block to put together a block of their own. Far from approving or attempting to contain the conflict, Alan tweeted videos with allegations that “La Plata workers were punished for their ideology, because they demonstrated in favor of Patricia Bullrich. They were denied their basic right, which is their salary.”
Despite the current confrontation between Garou and Alan, a common past. Photographed illegally, known as “Gestapo Pro” due to statements by the then Minister of Labor, Marcelo Villegas, they were both filmed at a Bapro office meeting in downtown Buenos Aires in 2017. There, along with AFI businessmen and officials, they conspired to bring legal cases and prosecute trade unionists. For this reason, both of them are still on trial.
