Axel Kicillof has returned to the national political scene with a direct political message: “Milei’s model has already failed.” From Mar del Plata, where he led an event marking the 20th anniversary of the “No to the FTAA” campaign, the Buenos Aires governor called to “build a political alternative” towards 2027 and signaled how he plans to move forward after the electoral setback he suffered in his province. With the campaign barely over and the defeat confirmed by a margin of less than 30,000 votes, Kicillof sought to reinstall a different political reading of the results: “Many voted out of frustration, not out of support for a project,” he stated. The phrase sounded both as internal self-criticism and as a message to the rest of Peronism, which is going through a stage of reconfiguration. The meeting in Mar del Plata served as a symbolic framework. Surrounded by Buenos Aires officials, Kicillof reclaimed the feat of the 2005 “No to the FTAA” and the role of Néstor Kirchner in that episode that pitted Latin America against the United States' commercial project. “The one who defeated the FTAA was the Latin American people,” he said, with a more militant than institutional tone. The governor also targeted the libertarian administration: he described its policies as “anachronistic” and warned that privatizations or labor reforms “already failed in the past.” In parallel, he demanded a debt of 13 trillion pesos that, he noted, the Nation owes the province due to funding cuts. Two years before the next presidential election, Kicillof is positioning himself as one of the few leaders within Peronism with both governance and political clout. “We have to regain empathy with the people,” he expressed, in an attempt to contrast with the more technocratic logic of the ruling party. Without concrete definitions on candidacies, his decision to quickly return to the political scene was read by his inner circle as a gesture to maintain centrality in the internal debate and prevent other names from taking over the opposition space.
