• Elections: Argentina votes with fear of another 'black Monday'

The 34 million Argentines authorized to vote this Sunday are not deceived: they know that, Mauricio Macri or Alberto Fernández the president of the country as of December 10, what is coming is very complex. Tanned in crisis - the country suffers one of more or less every decade - they are not fooled: the candidates may promise them a new time, but they are well aware that what is heard in an election campaign should not be taken seriously . The recession, triggered inflation and rising unemployment weigh more than any promise .

Those voters are the same as last Friday they sought to withdraw from the ATMs as many pesos as possible to change them to dollars before the dreaded megadevaluation that could arrive on Monday. The memory of the depreciation of the peso after the primary of August 11 that gave an overwhelming triumph to the Peronist Fernandez -49 to 33% - is well present: 23% in a few minutes. Will it happen again? Not a few companies advanced for Friday 24 this month the payment of the monthly salary, because employers and employees feared - they fear - that this salary would lose value on Monday. With the renegotiation of the debt with the IMF as an inevitable horizon, the days before the elections the peso continued to lose value and the newspaper 'El Cronista' stressed that, at this rate of purchase of dollars by individuals, the Central Bank He will run out of enough foreign currency before the new presidential term begins.

"Nothing is going to happen ," economic analyst Willy Kohan said this week. "Macri has already done what the market feared: stocks (restrictions on the purchase) of the dollar, devaluation, populist measures." Augusto Darges, CEO of the Silver Cloud consultancy, told EL MUNDO that he sees dangers according to what happens on Sunday's long election night: "If this Sunday night the two main candidates do not give a message of moderation and collaboration, the situation from here to December 10 will be even more complex. "

Although its second lines have been having constant contact to prevent the economic situation from falling apart, the bad personal relationship between Macri and Fernández casts shadows on the transition that opens, even if Macri achieved the "miracle" of reaching the Second round of November 24 and winning the election: the numbers of the economy are delicate, and Macri would need the support of the Peronist opposition. Everything could start with something as elementary as talking on the phone and congratulating the winner once the results of the election have been confirmed. And then?

"I don't rule out a joint photo of Macri and Fernández on Monday," said EL MUNDO Ignacio Zuleta, political analyst at the newspaper "Clarín." And the next four years? What can they offer? "The country and the region of 2019 are not the same as in 2015. Everything is wrapped in a blanket of uncertainty," Mariano Vila, general director of Llorente and Cuenca in Argentina, told EL MUNDO. "The Argentina of 2020 we will only meet in March, April. Argentina needs to regain political confidence, in addition to credit . We must first see who is left as the leader of the opposition to work with them."

Beyond the fight for the Presidency of the country, this Sunday also brings into play half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies. And there is a promising fact: there is no absolute majority for any political group. Reality, then, will force negotiation. To speak, to talk, one of the great deficits of Argentine politics. The strategic province of Buenos Aires is also at stake - with Peronism as a wide favorite - and the city of Buenos Aires, which indicates that it will remain in the hands of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, of the Macri party and likely presidential candidate in 2023. But before You have to reach 2020.

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