After not being elected president of the entity, the mayor formalized the submission of an ordinance project to the Deliberative Council, which ultimately led to the town's withdrawal from the bloc.
The defeat suffered in the elections for the authorities of the Regional Community of Punilla unleashed an excessive reaction from Raúl Cardinali. As a result, the mayor of Cosquín formalized the submission of an ordinance project to the Deliberative Council that ultimately removed the locality from the bloc. The legislative text aims to immediately repeal the institutional agreements that linked the municipality with the supramunicipal entity since 2005.
The Executive's initiative officially entered for regulatory debate, and the legislative blocs evaluated the request for treatment on the table. In local politics, Cardinali's maneuver is interpreted as a political whim that seeks to mask a resounding failure in his objective to preside over the Community. The decision to abandon the organization arises immediately after it was confirmed that the official failed to consolidate the necessary support to achieve his goal.
The mayor of Cosquín intended to lead the management of the entity, but his candidacy lacked the backing of his Peronist and Radical peers. The departmental assembly unanimously appointed Fabián Flores, the mayor of Mayú Sumaj, as the new president of the district organization. Anticipating the imminent fall in votes, the official chose to absent himself from the conclave, adopting a stance of isolation.
The Punilla Regional Community met last week to elect its new authorities. Cardinali was not present.
The questionable grounds for the exit
Under the pretense of justifying the institutional snub, the text sent to the local legislative body used language filled with jabs and administrative reproaches. “Approaching two decades since that integration, the cost-benefit balance of being part of the Regional Community of Punilla shows that the suprarregional body does not yield concrete advances for the city of Cosquín,” states the presentation.
The mayor's central argument directly targets the economic funds that the local State contributes monthly through revenue sharing. “Due to the resignation of public resources from Cosquín intended for the maintenance of the Regional Community, it is timely and convenient to recover those public funds to allocate them to the concrete improvement of local municipal services,” adds the project.
The striking financial argument of the mayor denotes his lack of general foresight and exposes a worrying intolerance towards the democratic values he claims to defend. The opposition councilors, for their part, deemed it unfeasible to dismantle health and environmental complementarity agreements based solely on the personal discontent of the current leadership.
Fabián Flores, mayor of Mayú Sumaj, was elected as the new president of the Punilla Regional Community.
Failure in the search for informal alliances
The operators of the Cosquín mayor's office initiated informal contacts with some neighborhood leaders who hold methodological discrepancies with the current network. In that recruitment strategy is Emiliano Paredes, the mayor of Tanti, whose municipality interrupted its active participation within the Regional Community. The bloc of Peronist mayors criticized the institutional detachment of the Cosquín authorities for prioritizing power disputes.
The unusual move by the Kirchnerist Raúl Cardinali will inevitably deepen the territorial fragmentation of the valley to the detriment of municipal interests. The neighborhood groups warned that administrative isolation will harm the infrastructure management that is ordinarily processed before the provincial ministries. The partisan selfishness displayed by the municipal leadership damages the public credibility of the local leadership in Punilla.
The voluntary distancing from the main cultural capital of the department (only due to the mayor's whim) weakens the negotiating power of the bloc in the face of regional demands. The neighborhood commissions lament that the tantrums of a poor loser interfere with the development of coordinated long-term public policies. The legislative session defined the scope of an ordinance motivated exclusively by the wounded pride of an increasingly delegitimized Kirchnerist administration.
