Argentina - 2023 Election
The 2023 Argentine elections are essentially divided into three stages: the STEP, the central day and the balloting. According to the 2023 Electoral Schedule and article 20 of Law 26571, the PASO was held on August 13. The central day of the 2023 general elections will take place on October 22 and November 19 will be the ballot or second electoral round.
Deeply unpopular President Alberto Fernandez was not seeking reelection in October as year-on-year inflation runs at 115 percent, poverty has soared, and the value of the peso has plummeted. The government, battling dwindling foreign reserves, has imposed strict currency controls and slapped businesses with higher import taxes to shore up dollars.
Argentina is a federal constitutional republic. In October 2019, Alberto Fernández was elected president in elections that local and international observers considered generally free and fair. In November 2021, the country held midterm municipal, provincial, and federal elections. Voters elected one-half of the members of the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the members of the Senate.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful and arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by federal and provincial officials; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and serious government corruption.
Prison conditions were harsh and life threatening due to overcrowding, poor medical care, and unsanitary conditions. There were reports of repeated and arbitrary transfers, transfers to distant locations, and the recurrent use of solitary confinement as a method of punishment, particularly in the province of Buenos Aires. The slow pace of the justice system often resulted in lengthy detentions beyond the period stipulated by law. According to official statistics, almost half of the 11,389 individuals detained in federal facilities in September 2022 were in pretrial detention.
The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, made official 28 April 2023 the call for the primary and general elections, as well as ratifying the date for a possible second round if necessary. Through Decree 237/2023, published in the Official Gazette of that country, it was determined that on Sunday, August 13, 2023, the electorate of that nation will be summoned for the primary, open, simultaneous and mandatory elections, known as PASO. Meanwhile, the date to determine the president, vice president and 19 Mercosur parliamentarians and 19 substitutes will be October 22, 2023.
Likewise, November 19 is set for the eventual second round of elections provided for in article 96 of the national Constitution. Meanwhile, article 5 establishes that on October 22, 2023, national senators and deputies will be elected, as appropriate for each district.
The Ministry of the Interior, through the National Electoral Directorate, will adopt the necessary measures for the organization and conduct of the elections. The General Electoral Command (CGE) will be made up of members of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, although it could also include members of the National Gendarmerie, the Prefecture, the Airport Security Police (PSA), the Federal Police and the Armed Forces. Provincial Security, if necessary.
In the midst of a strong clamor for her to be the candidate for president of the Frente de Todos [Front of All], Cristina Kirchner surprised with a long letter to confirm that she will not be a protagonist in this election year. The Vice-President of the Nation, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, spoke 18 May 2023 on C5N in the program Duro de Domar, where she explained the reasons why she will not be a presidential candidate in this year's elections. "A precautionary measure is enough to suspend me", she said. In her speech, she affirmed that she is not in a position to run. "I am on probation, technically", she stressed in relation to the possibility that the Supreme Court may decide to suspend her candidacy, as they did with the nominations of Sergio Uñac in San Juan and Juan Manzur in Tucumán.
Although some days ago she insisted again that she will not be a candidate, when asked about the reaction of the militancy and the requests for her to finally be a candidate, she stated again: "I believe that there is text compression in the people. There is love, affection and shared faith. But text comprehension is an attribute of the majority. It seems to me that what I said the other day is very clear, which is no more than what I said on December 6. The word of someone who was twice president has to be worth".
Fernández de Kirchner remarked that the decision of the highest court, for which an impeachment trial has been requested, was adopted "only 72 hours before the beginning of the electoral ban and with a clear political objective: to harm Peronism and cover up its own crimes". "I am not going to enter into the perverse game that they impose on us with a democratic facade so that those same judges, perched today in the Court, issue a ruling disqualifying me or directly removing me from any candidacy I may hold, to leave Peronism in absolute fragility and weakness in the face of the electoral contest. Recent events have proved me right", he said.
She also criticized the International Monetary Fund (IMF), considering that the organization "intervenes, takes the helm of the Argentine economy, imposes its economic program and triggers again the uncontrolled inflationary process" in the country.
After Mauricio Macri, Alberto Fernández and Cristina Kirchner abandoned the race, the electoral race to obtain the presidency of the Republic left open scenarios for an official confrontation between the ruling party and the opposition. Candidates from the ruling Peronist Frente de Todos coalition, opposition center-right Juntos por el Cambio coalition and a libertarian group will likely compete.
The political panorama in the face of the elections changed its configuration: the Frente de Todos must consolidate a candidate and wait for what decision Axel Kicillof will make with the elections in the Province of Buenos Aires. The elections will not be resolved in October, since in all scenarios the candidates do not reach a sufficient percentage to prevail in the first round. Voters will have to wait until November and see which two parties enter that defining ballotage.
According to popular opinion, there were three candidates from the main political parties that are the favorites to win the the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory (PASO) round. and, subsequently, contenders to win the presidential sash. The Juntos por el Cambio party led with an accumulated percentage of 33.5%, followed by Frente de Todos with 27.4% and Javier Milei with 21.1%.
For the political party Juntos por el Cambio, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta led the internal elections with 13.6%, while in Frente de Todos Sergio Massa heads his list. For the opposition, the answer is that Horacio Rodríguez Larreta would surpass Patricia Bullrich in the Buenos Aires territory and would prevail as a JxC candidate at the national level. If he manages to channel the votes of the former Security Minister, he would also be the first force in the country and would be close to the Presidency.
Argentines would choose between far-right lawmaker Javier Milei, center-right coalition candidate Patricia Bullrich and Economy Minister Sergio Massa in this year's presidential vote, according to results from the primary election. Anti-establishment Milei took the top spot at more than 30 percent, with 93 percent of votes counted. and replace the peso with the US dollar as the main currency. Bullrich, 67, had about 28 percent of the vote and 51-year-old lawyer and government minister Massa was coming in third with about 27 percent.
"We have managed to build this competitive alternative that will put an end to the parasitic, thieving, useless political caste," Milei told supporters. The far-right lawmaker with a soft spot for former US president Donald Trump and Brazil's ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro went into Sunday's vote as his Libertad Avanza party's only candidate. Among other things, Milei has said that he wants to abolish the Central Bank, ban abortion, liberalize the sale of arms and open up a market for the sale of human organs. He believes climate change is a hoax, and wants to replace the peso with the US dollar as the main currency. and replace The value of the peso had plummeted and annual inflation was running at over 100%.
With 29.86 percent of the vote, Milei achieved a result beyond anything that any poll had predicted, beating both Patricia Bullrich, the candidate for the right-wing Juntos por el cambio, and the Peronist candidate, and current finance minister, Sergio Massa. The three candidates would now face off in a first-round vote on October 22, followed by a run-off on November 19, if necessary. Given the poor record of the two previous presidencies, that of Mauricio Macri and that of Alberto Fernandez, the speech of Javier Milei, who wants to be a candidate who breaks with the elites who would have governed Argentina badly, had credibility and substance.
Tempted by dollarisation, Argentines seem to have forgotten that the previous experiment of that sort ended in 2001 in an unprecedented debacle: a banking crash, bloody riots, the plundering of people’s savings and an explosion of poverty. In the 1990s, to remedy a hyperinflation that had reached 2,000 to 3,000 percent a year, President Carlos Menem succeeded in establishing "uno por uno" convertability – one dollar for one peso. This inflation-free decade, which Argentines have dubbed "pizza and champagne", is still remembered as a period of opulence, notably for members of the middle class, who found themselves suddenly rich in dollars. Economy Minister Sergio Massa produced a big surprise by finishing first in the opening round of Argentina’s presidential election, reflecting voters’ wariness about handing the presidency to his chief rival, a right-wing populist who upended national politics and pledged to drastically diminish the state. Massa’s victory over Javier Milei, a chainsaw-wielding economist and freshman lawmaker, came despite the fact that on his watch inflation has surged into triple digits, eating away at purchasing power of salaries and boosting poverty. Still, he wasn’t punished in the voting.
Massa has been a leading figure in the center-left administration in power since 2019. He successfully focused messaging on the way Milei’s proposals to slash the size of the state — from halving the number of government ministries to deep spending cuts — would affect everyday life for Argentines. Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who admires former U.S. President Donald Trump, built a groundswell of support while calling for elimination of the Central Bank, replacement of the local currency with the U.S. dollar, and a purge of the corrupt establishment that he called the “political caste.” He also has cast himself as a crusader against what he calls the sinister forces of socialism at home and abroad. He opposes sex education, feminist policies and abortion, which is legal in Argentina. He rejects the notion that humans have had a role in causing climate change.
With nearly all balots counted early Monday, Massa had 36.7% of the vote and Milei had 30%, meaning the two will go to a Nov. 19 runoff. Most pre-election polls, which have been notoriously unreliable, had given Milei a slight lead over Massa. Former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, of the main center-right opposition coalition, got 23.8% to finish third in the field of eight candidates.
Massa’s campaign this year followed another eight years ago, when he finished a disappointing third place and was knocked out of the running. This time, he will have his shot in the runoff. That contest will determine whether Argentina will continue with a center-left administration or veer sharply to the right.
Whatever the results, Milei has already inserted himself and his libertarian party into a political structure dominated by a center-left and a center-right coalition for almost two decades. He was celebratory at his campaign headquarters, saying the preliminary results indicated his party gained 40 seats in the lower house of Congress and eight in the Senate.
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