Buenos Aires (AFP)

Center-left Peronist candidate Alberto Fernandez won Sunday's presidential election in Argentina in the first round, ahead of outgoing Liberal president Mauricio Macri, according to partial results.

With nearly 80% of the ballots counted, Mr. Fernandez obtained 47.45% of the votes, against 41.11% for Mr. Macri. He becomes the new president of this country of 44 million inhabitants.

To win in the first round, Mr. Fernandez had to get more than 45% of the votes, or more than 40% of the votes with an advantage of more than 10 points on the candidate who came in second.

According to the Ministry of the Interior, voter turnout was over 80%.

"It's a great day for Argentina", had reacted, confident, in front of the press Mr. Fernandez, whose colisera is the former president Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), shortly after the closing of the polls .

The outgoing president, Mauricio Macri, 60, whose popularity fell sharply last year due to the severe economic crisis, had estimated after voting that two "competing visions of the future (were) at stake".

After voting, Fernandez promised to work to reduce the strong political polarization that crosses the country, between Peronists and supporters of Mr. Macri who is seeking a second term.

"+ We + and + them, it's over," said this 60-year-old lawyer, who forms a ticket with the former president Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015), candidate for the vice president. "We are in a deep crisis (economic), everyone must take responsibility for what will happen," he insisted.

During the August primaries - considered as a dress rehearsal before the presidential election - Fernandez was 17 points ahead of Macri, who finally narrowed the gap.

The vote in Argentina takes place while the region is shaken by many political and social crises: mobilization against the results of the presidential election in Bolivia, wave of protest in Chile and social unrest in Ecuador two weeks ago.

- worst crisis since 2001 -

"I voted with the conviction and the certainty that he did things well and that he could have done better, but that he needed time," 54-year-old Maria Marta told AFP. about Mr. Macri.

"Alberto and Cristina represent greater equity and I am excited to see the end of a country that benefits only a small group," said Liliana, a 64-year-old architect.

The outgoing president is ending his mandate in the middle of the worst economic crisis that Argentina has experienced since 2001. In recession for more than a year, the country is experiencing high inflation (37.7% in September), a massive debt and a rising poverty rate (35.4%, or one in three Argentineans).

But investors fear that the return to power of Alberto Fernandez does not bring about the return of interventionist policies of the period of Kirchnerism (2003-2015).

Analysts are also wondering who will actually govern: Mr. Fernandez, former chief of staff of Cristina Kirchner and her husband Nestor Kirchner (president from 2003 to 2007), or Mrs. Kirchner, 66 years.

Weakened by fears of a default by the country, which received a loan of 57 billion dollars from the IMF, the peso fell from 5.86% in the week before the vote to end at 65 pesos for a dollar.

The American currency is historically the refuge of the Argentineans in case of crisis.

Accustomed to economic upheavals, many Argentines gathered Friday in front of banks and exchange offices to buy dollars or withdraw their deposits.

Mr. Fernandez tried to reassure them. "Let the Argentines be quiet, we will respect your deposits," he said, referring to the specter of "corralito", the unofficial name of the measures taken in 2001 in Argentina to end a race for liquidity and the flight of capital.

Since the primaries, Argentinian savers have withdrawn some $ 12 billion from their accounts, about 36.4% of the total.

© 2019 AFP