With more than thirty years of political career, the charismatic Sergio Massa achieved his dream opportunity this Sunday to run for the Argentine presidency, from the position of Minister of Economy and with an annual inflation rate of 140%.

On November 19, Massa, who was the most voted in the first round of the elections with 36% of the vote, will face the anti-system libertarian Javier Milei, who was the favorite in the polls but lagged behind with just over 30%. according to the research of 83.26% of the tables.

It is the second time that Massa is running for president, after a defeat in 2015.

Massa, who today is the most important figure in Argentina’s center-left Peronist government, chose to remain in the position of minister with the idea that “the campaign is the management.”

He took office in the middle of the storm, following the abrupt resignation of his predecessors Silvina Batakis and Martín Guzmán, and was subsequently praised by his colleagues. “Sergio took office three days before we left by helicopter,” pro-government leader Jorge Ferraresi said, referring to Fernando de la Rúa’s abrupt departure in 2001, during Argentina’s worst crisis.

acting minister

Massa, 51 years old and a dialogist, has signed agreements with businessmen, unions and with the International Monetary Fund. But he could not control inflation, the main concern of Argentinians.

A lawyer by profession, he has the ability to show difficulties as achievements, at least among his followers.

“Even when he doesn’t have a plan, he is constantly improvising and his promises are not kept. He always conveys the idea that he is in control of the situation and that he will find a way out,” said Diego Genoud, Sergio’s unauthorized. biographer Massa.

A skill that his rivals criticize. “He is a dangerous guy, precisely because of his ability to agitate people. He is able to deliver a speech with a fluidity and discursive effectiveness that makes one believe in him, even when it is completely at odds with the facts. You tend to believe Massa,” said opposition deputy Fernando Iglesias.

Mass “is only interested in the accumulation of power,” he said.

Charismatic

With a corpulent appearance, neat haircut and always a photographic smile, Massa speaks slowly and modulates as if he were in a Ted Talk.

On more than one occasion, however, he described himself as “passionate” and pointed to the Italian heritage passed on to him by his immigrant parents.

“I’m super passionate, for better or for worse,” he explained in an interview, during which he also revealed that he had intense arguments with some of his family members, almost coming to blows with his uncle and his father-in-law.

He then assured that he no longer deals with the same intensity as in his youth: “The blows shape you,” he said.

In his political career, Massa has turned friendships into enmities and vice versa several times. In 2013, he made the leap into national politics with his Frente Renovador, a space within Peronism that presented itself as an alternative to the government of Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), of whom he had been chief of staff and who today made him the day again supports .

In 2015 he ran for president, but was left out of the first round of elections that right-wing Mauricio Macri ultimately won.

Before founding the Frente Renovador between 2007 and 2008 and between 2011 and 2015, he served as mayor of the city of Tigre, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, for the alliance of then President Kirchner. However, a few years later he distanced himself from her, even claiming that “Cristina is the past” or that “she should be imprisoned.” In 2019, he rejoined the former president, who was elected vice president that year.

“It is difficult to find cohesion in Massa. (But) it has the ability to always be well placed and coveted in the energy market,” Genoud told AFP.

Massa was born and raised on the edge of the province of Buenos Aieres and got his start in the liberal party UCEDÉ in the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s, he turned his militancy toward Buenos Aires’ Peronism with the help of political leaders Cristina Camaño and Marcela Durrieu, his mother-in-law.

Durrieu introduced him to his daughter, Malena Galmarini, whom he married and had two children. “She attached them to her, she must have liked him as Malena’s friend,” recalls Fernando Galmarini, Massa’s father-in-law and former Peronist leader.

Malena, president of the state water company, serves as his promoter and defender in the political arena, whether denouncing campaigns against her husband in the press or publishing photos of him sleeping with the dog. (JO)