MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bullrich to run in next year's Argentine primaries no matter what

Bullrich was among the few not to condemn the attack against CFK

PRO Chairwoman Patricia Bullrich has made it clear she will run for president of Argentina next year even if her former boss Mauricio Macri himself decides to enter the race.

“My decision to be a presidential pre-candidate has to do with the fight for deep change, against Kirchnerism that has ruined the culture of work and education,” said the former Security Minister.

For now, only Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta appears on the radar as he rival for the primaries.

Larreta has reportedly banked on Bullrich stepping down on the grounds that the Radical Civic Union (UCR), PRO's main ally in the JxC coalition would endorse a single candidacy from day one.

Bullrich became head of PRO through Macri's appointment, but she has always played her own game, particularly after the former head of state tipped the balance in favor of Larreta.

Bullrich is reportedly in talks with former Mendoza Governor Alfredo Cornejo of the UCR to become her running mate.

Bullrich, who holds no office presently, is freer to tour the country and is doing so, mostly in the province of Buenos Aires. She was one of the few politicians not to condemn the September 1 attack against Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and insisted violence was on the side of Peronism: “The little angels of love have already threatened that if Cristina is convicted they will break everything, but I am convinced that there is an alert people who will not allow them to break everything,” she said.

Regarding the attack, she said again that it was “a lone wolf or a couple, not a political group” and questioned the Government without repudiating anything: “Faced with the seriousness of the facts, seeing the baseness of the President when he said that the instigators of the act were the press, the opposition, and the Judiciary, I came out with a very clear position: the President responds with an extreme radicalization and politicization of the facts,” Bullrich argued.