• Argentina, a country increasingly in crisis. Health emergency risk
  • Argentina, defeat Macri. Dollar + 34% and stock market down 31%

Share

26 October 2019In a climate of total economic uncertainty, on Sunday, 33.8 million Argentines are expected at the polls to choose president and vice-president, one third of the senators and half of the deputies. There are six candidates in lyts who exceeded the 2% threshold in the primaries last August, but the comparison for Casa Rosada is centered on the duel between outgoing president Mauricio Macri - Juntos's candidate for el Cambio with his deputy Miguel Angel Pichetto - and Peronist rival Alberto Fernandez of Frente de Todos, with his deputy, former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

The electoral appointment considered by analysts as one of the most delicate and crucial in the country's history, whose outcome is particularly expected from the financial markets. The economic crisis, the upward spread, the widespread poverty and the increase in crime are the background to the complex vote.

The latest polls give a 20 percentage point difference to Fernandez, credited with 52% of voting intentions, while Macri is around 32%. In third place is Roberto Lavagna at 6%, while the other 3 candidates do not exceed 2%.

Moreover, Fernandez has already come out as winner of the August 11th primaries - with a gap of 16 percentage points - and in recent weeks has strengthened his advantage. Thus, if the polls confirm the polls, Fernandez will be elected already from the first round because the Argentine law assigns the victory to the candidate who exceeds 45% of the votes or gets more than 40% with 10 points ahead of the second. Otherwise you will go to the ballot, scheduled for November 24th.

Macri is charged with the responsibility of the new economic crisis in which the country has collapsed: according to the latest forecasts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) GDP falling by 3.1% and inflation at 57.3%. His motto was to "bring Argentina back to the world", but his first term ends with a sharp deterioration in macro-economic indicators, growing poverty and unemployment as a result of the lack of reforms as well as the flight of capital and entrepreneurs.

The 60-year-old entrepreneur, former president of Boca Juniors (1995-2008), in politics since 2005 and a deputy for two years, has a program of liberal approach that has led him to reopen the country for dialogue and collaboration with the West and international economic-financial organizations. On the occasion of the G20 in Buenos Aires, world leaders have shown confidence and support in its reform policies, first and foremost the US president Donald Trump, who supports the entry - pending - of Argentina into the OECD. Among the results achieved by the Macri government is the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union.

His rival Fernandez - 60 years, lawyer, lecturer in legal subjects, in politics since ever - presents a program based on the social, which provides, among other things, an ad hoc plan against poverty and debt renegotiation starting from the maxi loan of over 56 billion dollars obtained by the IMF in recent months. Chief of Staff of the former President Ne'stor Kirchner from 2003 to 2007, he then assumed a critical attitude towards the administration of Cristina Fernandez and the political and economic choices of kirchnerismo. In 2018, however, Fernandez returned to that political platform, designated a candidate for the Casa Rosada.

The leader of the Frente de Todos does not enjoy the favor of the economic and financial world, both internally and internationally, which fears a return to closing policies and ideological choices in the continental policy at the antipodes of those implemented by Macri, starting with the crisis in Venezuela, for which Fernandez would opt for neutrality.

The third candidate is Roberto Lavagna, 77, a Federal Consensus candidate, who presents himself as an alternative to the dualism between macrism and Peronism. The youngest and leftmost aspirant is Nicolas del Cano, of the Frente de izquierda.

Besides them there is the former military man of Frent Nos, Jose Gomez, known for his conservative positions on subjects such as homeland, family and the 'no' to abortion. The sixth candidate is Jose Luis Espert of Unite Frente Despertar, at his first active political experience.