Macri firing in Argentina poll
BUENOS AIRES: Allies of Argentina’s business-friendly President Mauricio Macri could have swept the country’s “Big Five” voting districts in yesterday’s congressional election, neutering the opposition and advancing his chances of being re-elected in 2019.
The private sector has worried about a potential comeback by former President Cristina Fernandez, a free-spending populist who nearly bankrupted the country during her 2007-2015 rule, but opinion polls since August put her in second place in her bid for a Buenos Aires province Senate race.
Macri’s Cambiemos, or “Let’s Change” coalition, should get the most votes in races in the top five population centres of Buenos Aires City, and the provinces of Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe and Mendoza, said Ignacio Labaqui, Buenos Aires-based analyst for emerging markets consultancy Medley Global Advisors.
Together the areas account for nearly 66% of Argentina’s electorate, according to voter registration data. No one party has won all five in a mid-term vote since 1985.
Such a sweep should give Cambiemos more than one-third of the Senate and lower House, said Julio Burdman, director of Observatorio Electoral consultancy.
“That would rob the opposition of the two-thirds majority needed to block presidential vetoes, and it would encourage Macri to deepen the free-market reforms that investors are asking him for,” Burdman said.
Fernandez tied with Macri’s candidate Esteban Bullrich in a non-binding Buenos Aires Senate primary in August but has since lagged, failing to unite the opposition. A Management & Fit poll on Friday showed her 4.8 percentage points behind Bullrich. Other surveys show a tighter race.
Her expected second-place showing would still grant Fernandez one of the province’s three Senate seats under Argentina’s list system. Other parties within Peronism, used as a blanket term to describe opposition to Macri, are seeking a new, more moderate leader who could work with the increasingly powerful president.
Fernandez, who hails from the Peronist movement but formed her own party for this race, has been isolated politically by graft accusations. She says there may have been corruption in her government but denies personal wrongdoing.