Maximum tension between Macri and Rodríguez Larreta after his launch as a Buenos Aires candidate

The reappearance of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta , his launch as a candidate for the next elections and especially the battery of criticism with which he dispatched towards the PRO and towards the management of Jorge Macri in the City of Buenos Aires caused a commotion in Uspallata.

The head of the Government , Jorge Macri, has chosen not to respond to you, at least for now, but he has opted to have the spokesperson Laura Alonso do so , who described the strategy of the former mayor of Buenos Aires to cross his former political partners as “incomprehensible” . And she lashed out: “It is unfair. We are surprised by the aggressiveness of the attack because many people on his team work with us.”

The resentments between Larreta and Jorge Macri have been going on for some time and are public knowledge, despite the fact that neither of them has made regular public statements. But this sincerity by the MAD leader went further and, as the Buenos Aires government feels, broke all kinds of political codes.

Larreta's criticism of the city's management has so far been veiled or indirect . He had never questioned the Macris so directly, stating that the City "is not doing well" and that the PRO "has lost its identity." The decision to compete, whether as a candidate for legislator, deputy or senator, has been on his mind for a long time, but he finally made it after the talks he had with neighbors, a constant in recent months.

Larreta, who has his own leaders in the second and third ranks of the Buenos Aires administration, is posing a new challenge for Jorge Macri's government, which decided to bring forward the local legislative elections to try to stop the advance of La Libertad Avanza in the City. It was not expected that, in addition to Mileísmo and Kirchnerism, the Buenos Aires scene would add Larretism, either through the leader himself or through leaders close to him such as Emmanuel Ferrario or Senator Guadalupe Tagliaferri.

The scenario for the fourth round of elections varies depending on whether one analyses the legislative elections on May 18 or the national elections on October 26. The names also vary: there are those who even imagine a super classic, improbable but not impossible, between Mauricio Macri, Patricia Bullrich and Rodríguez Larreta for a Senate seat.

Beyond that panorama, the concrete fact is that the PRO will risk 18 years of hegemony in the City, with the majority in the Legislature at stake and two seats for senators that Juntos por el Cambio won at one time but that are now in the hands of leaders who have little to do with Macriism, such as the radical Martín Lousteau or the aforementioned Tagliaferri.

In this context, Larreta's appearance shakes up the PRO , a party of which he boasts of being one of its founders but of which, in fact, he is no longer a part. Will he have Lousteau's radicalism as an ally again? Can he add Elisa Carrió's Civic Coalition that has just launched Paula Oliveto as a candidate? Questions that will have answers in the coming months, but which worry almost all the actors who want to play hard in the City.

Meanwhile, the former head of government will continue to make appearances in the media , after having given an interview to Radio con Vos in which he made an autocracy of his failed presidential attempt in 2023. The focus of his speech will be on Buenos Aires and on recovering a city that, he understands, lost its seal in the 15 months of management by Jorge Macri, the candidate he says he had to support but had never chosen.

Larreta's emergence in the political arena of Buenos Aires is not the only problem that worries Jorge Macri. The other open source of conflict is the repeated clashes with Patricia Bullrich over the responsibility of the prisoners housed in police stations in the City who should be under the supervision of the National Penitentiary Service.

Part of the anger with the former head of Government has to do with the fact that he mentioned this issue, slipping in criticism of the management. From Uspallata they left him a message, which they made known : in his last year as head of Government, in 2023, out of 1,700 detainees in Buenos Aires establishments, there were 22 escapes; a higher percentage than in 2024, 21 out of a total of 2,300 inmates.