Last Friday (21), the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, informed that he will not run for re-election this year. In December 2022, after the announcement of her sentence to six years in prison and life disqualification from holding public office for corruption, Vice President Cristina Kirchner had already said that she would not run for any office in the 2023 elections (due to appeals in court, she could participate in the dispute).
The resignation of the last two Peronist Argentine presidents leaves a big question mark on who will be the candidate in October of the leftist current that won four of the last five elections for the Casa Rosada.
While the opposition already has pre-candidates like Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, mayor of Buenos Aires, and Patricia Bullrich, former Minister of Security (both from the political group of former president Mauricio Macri), in addition to outsider Javier Milei, Peronism has several names considered, but none emerging as favorites.
Among those identified as possible pre-candidates are the current Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli, who was the Peronist presidential candidate in 2015 (lost to Macri); the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa; the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro; the current head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Agustín Rossi; and the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof.
This, however, has already signaled that he plans to run for re-election and not run for president. Massa had been, along with Kirchner and Fernández (before the latter announced that he would not run), the most recurrent name among the options for Peronism in polls of voting intentions, but the bad moment of the Argentine economy weighs against him.
The dollar continues to soar, inflation reached 104.3% in March in the 12-month period (the highest in more than 30 years) and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Argentina presented a retraction of 1 in the fourth quarter of 2022 .5% compared to the third quarter.
The Peronist candidate for Casa Rosada can be chosen in two ways: by an internal consensus or that several candidates run in the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory (PASO) elections that will be held in August.
In the video in which he announced that he will not seek re-election, Fernández defended the second alternative. “The PASOs are the vehicle for society to select the best men and women of our Front [de Todos]
that best represent us in the next general elections”, he pointed out.
A consensus, at this point, would also be difficult, because Peronism is fractured: Fernández had to live with criticism from the Kirchnerist wing throughout his term, especially regarding the agreement to renegotiate the Argentine debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ), and also with interference in the appointment of ministers. In the Argentine political environment, it is thought that Cristina herself may go back and run again for Casa Rosada.
Whoever wins will have to deal with the wear and tear of being the official candidate of a government that ends in a melancholy way due to the Argentine economic disaster.
“It is a government that has less than 20 points of approval, its negative image is the highest of all the political leaders we measured and has a level of approval of the management that neither Cristina nor Mauricio Macri had [ao fim de seus mandatos]”, said Mariel Fornoni, director of the Management and Fit consultancy, in an interview with the EFE agency.
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