Former President Mauricio Macri announced through his YouTube channel that he will not be a candidate in this year’s elections.
In a six-minute video, the former head of state summarized the moment Argentina is experiencing, highlighted the role of Together for Change, valued the “teams” and confirmed that he will not compete to return to Casar Rosada.
“I want to ratify the decision that I will not be a candidate in the next election and I do so convinced that we must enlarge the political space for the change that we initiated, and that we have to inspire others with our actions,” he said. Macri, who was president of the Nation between 2015 and 2019.
The decision surprised and impacted the entire political world. As it turned out, Macri had advanced the announcement of him at the wedding party of María Eugenia Vidal, which took place this Saturday night in San Antonio de Areco.
Now, the determination will allow the PRO intern to be ordered, blocked by the possibility that he was going to compete in the Paso with Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich.
In turn, Vidal had anticipated that he was going to give up his candidacy if the former president launched himself to return to the national government.
Mauricio Macri’s full message
Dear Argentines, I share with all of you the certainty that Argentina today is in a difficult state to recognize. We are adrift, without driving, cut off from the world, alone.
The anguish that this situation produces is located in the middle of the chest. It is there where millions of Argentines feel the fear of losing their job, the fear of needing help for their health and not getting it, that retirement will not be enough, that they will rob us, or that our children will leave the country.
That is the fear that everything will get even worse and that it will turn the future into a threat instead of hope. But I have the conviction since this dark time began to end, I feel it in my heart, and I trust the decision of the Argentines to leave it behind forever.
I know that millions of people have a desire for us to work together again in the direction that we started back in 2015. A direction that was sadly interrupted in 2019.
But how did we get to be like this? There are many reasons, but I want to raise one that we have been repeating for decades: almost 80 years ago, an important part of Argentine society chose to believe in messianic leaders, characters who would supposedly save us and lead us to a better life.
Many bona fide Argentines pinned their hopes on them and gave them the responsibility to bring about the changes that were needed, but this type of leadership ended up being very damaging to the country. Gave disproportionate power to people as fallible as anyone
This paternalistic leadership discouraged Argentines from assuming their own responsibility for the changes they wanted for their lives, and that subordination brought us here, to a country with more than half of Argentines poor, with a devastated economy, increasingly threatened for drug trafficking.
I never believed in that model, because it is based on caudillismo, it is based on the capitalism of friends, on an authoritarian way of governing. I believe in individuals, in you, working together.
They heard me talk a thousand times about the importance of teams, about the healthy competition that makes the best emerge.
A few months ago, we Argentines were enormously happy thanks to the triumph of the Argentine team in Qatar. The selection bet on team leadership, as a whole. He bet the sum of individuals behind a goal, even having the best player in the history of humanity on the field. But the rest did not expect him to be the one to ensure victory…
Each of the players fully took up the challenge. They all shone, they all suffered, they all fought. In the end, everyone won. The leader did not win, the team won and that is how all Argentines won.
This success was the product of a shared responsibility and I believe in that way of governing. This is how we governed between 2015 and 2019, there was no personalism, there was true teamwork between the government and the citizens.
Now we have to be very careful, because in difficult situations we immediately go looking for a messianic personality that gives us security.
Together for Change has managed to overcome that false illusion of the individual savior. We have always done so while maintaining unity, despite the complex moments we have gone through. We are demonstrating it with the large number of new, competitive and different leaders that we have today.
I am convinced that this is the team that Argentina needs to start the new cycle. For all this, I want to ratify the decision that I will not be a candidate in the next election and I do so convinced that we must enlarge the political space for the change that we are initiating, and that we have to inspire others with our actions.
But I am going to continue defending freedom, democracy, and the values we share as I have always done and will always do so alongside you, with the certainty that we Argentines have matured and we are not going to let ourselves be trampled on by populism any more.
I trust a lot in the learning of these years; I trust that they will choose who best represents us and that this person will have the support of all; never again never again will we have a puppet as president
I want to end this message by being grateful: thank you for the maturity to move in the right direction knowing that it was a difficult path; thank you for the times you spontaneously took to the streets to peacefully defend what you believed in; thank you for the courage, the determination that we shared in those unforgettable “yes we can” marches; thank you for the courage to publicly express your support when it was much easier to keep quiet than to show
Thank you for the love you show me throughout the country and for the respect you have for my family. Know that I was, I am, and I will always be there for you. This relationship of affection and respect that unites us is for life. I love them, I love them, I love them.
News in development.