Argentina election campaigns suspended after 11-year old killed in robbery
The death of an 11-year-old girl in a drive-by robbery caught on grainy security footage in Buenos Aires has shocked Argentina and prompted all major candidates to cancel their closing campaign rallies ahead of national primary elections on Sunday.
Morena Domínguez was attacked by two robbers who were riding a motorcycle when she was about to arrive at school early on Wednesday morning in the Buenos Aires district of Lanús. The attackers snatched her mobile phone, and she fell to the pavement where she was left unconscious.
She later died in a hospital, Lanús’s security minister, Diego Kravetz, said.
The death led to protests in Lanús, and put crime at the center of the country’s political discussion ahead of Sunday’s vote. Political campaigns that had been in full force largely came to a standstill.
Axel Kicillof, who is seeking re-election as the governor of Buenos Aires province, paused his campaign as did Lanús’s mayor, Néstor Grindetti, who is seeking to become the gubernatorial candidate in the main opposition coalition.
The economy minister, Sergio Massa, who is the presidential hopeful for the ruling party, called off his closing rally scheduled for Thursday.
The two candidates who are seeking to become presidential contenders in the main opposition ticket, Buenos Aires’ mayor, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and former security minister Patricia Bullrich, also called off their final rallies.
Voting is mandatory in Argentina’s primaries and the results are taken in large part as a massive opinion poll that gives hints of what could happen when voters head to the polls in October.
“We can’t keep living with so much
anguish and fear,” Bullrich wrote on social media. She has made her hardon-crime stance a centerpiece of her campaign.
“There are no words for so much pain,” Larreta wrote.
The 11-year-old’s death received immediate, wall-to-wall coverage on all of the country’s news channels, claiming center stage in a campaign that had been dominated by talk of the economy in a country with an annual inflation rate of more than 100%.
Opinion polls regularly show that inflation and crime are voters’ two main concerns.