This combo of file photos show opposition presidential candidate Mauricio Macri, left, during a city police ceremony, October 28, 2015, and ruling party presidential candidate Daniel Scioli at a p…
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Centre-left candidate Daniel Scioli is going up against the centre-right’s Mauricio Macri.
Macri, who is backed by big business and private media, has promised to introduce free market reforms to Argentina’s economy, representing the country’s return to the neoliberalism of the 1990s.
(AP Photo/Jorge Saenz, File).
CURRENT GOVERNMENT: The election will end 12 years in power for the Kirchners: first Nestor Kirchner in 2003 and then his wife Cristina Fernandez, who was elected in 2007 and 2011.
A man votes during the runoff election in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, November 22, 2015.
If Macri wins as opinion polls indicate, the discrepancy is in the percentage points difference, he would become the first non-Peronist and non-Radical (Argentina’s two leading political forces) in reaching Casa Rosada through universal vote.
The tight race between the two frontrunners forced a runoff and an intensified campaign as Macri has since surpassed Scioli in the polls.
“This government has helped a lot of people with the social welfare plans”, said Carlos Mercurio, a 55-year-old newsstand owner who voted for Scioli.
The local Merval stock index has shot up 25 per cent since Mr Macri’s muscular performance in the first round, as investors factored in the possibility he will win the run-off and free up markets by dismantling currency and trade controls.
In line with his neoliberal economic policy, Macri has promised to roll back a few of these policies.
Scarred by the most recent economic collapse in 2001 that tossed millions into poverty, many Argentines fear any dramatic shift in policy could make things worse.
The country of 41 million people is about four times the size of Texas and has Latin America’s third-largest economy. Economic growth was strong during much of the previous decade, but the economy has stalled in recent years, with high inflation and a slumping national currency. The tight finish meant a runoff, and both men have been scrambling to appeal to the almost 30 percent of voters who picked one of the other four candidates in the first round.
He will also face a dispute with so-called “holdout” creditors who have sued Argentina in the United States courts for unpaid debts. Macri flipped his position and voiced support for the nationalization of the YPF oil company and Aerolineas Argentina, popular actions by the Fernandez administration.
“The candidates are trying to look like each other”, said Maria Victoria Murillo, a professor of political science at Columbia University and an expert on Argentine politics.
He says he’ll lift controls on use of US dollars and will distance the country from Venezuela’s leftist leadership. Doing that would likely lead to a sharp devaluation of the Argentine peso. Foreign reserves are at a nine-year low and the county has been shut out of the global bond market due to a festering sovereign default.
Scioli, governor of the large Buenos Aires province, said he would maintain energy and transportation subsidies along with the many social works programs instituted under Fernandez and Nestor Kirchner, her late husband and presidential predecessor.
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Scioli, 58, a milder ally of Kirchner, won 37.8 percent of the vote in the first round on October 25.
