Argentina prepares its presidential candidates and starts the campaign for the primaries

The political formations Argentineans make official this Saturday their lists of pre-candidates for the Presidency of the country, as well as for deputies and senators, for the national primaries on August 13, in which a single list per coalition will be determined for the general elections on October 22.

Today is the deadline for the presentation of candidates for the primary, open, simultaneous and mandatory elections, known as PASO, and the campaign for those elections formally begins.

However, for months -in an intense year full of provincial elections- the electoral hornet’s nest has been agitating, both in the ruling Frente de Todos, now renamed Unión por la Patria, and in the main opposition coalition, Together for Change. , and the rest of formations, including La Libertad Avanza by the ultra-liberal economist and ‘political anti-caste’ Javier Milei.

Some elections that neither the former president (2007-2015) and current vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, nor her greatest political enemy, the former conservative president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), nor the current head of state, the Peronist Alberto Fernández, whose popularity has plummeted mainly due to the delicate economic situation in the country.

Peronism in unity

The pro-government front, with the Fernández family and the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, as main references, it has rushed almost to the end to define its strategy, revealing the power struggle and internal tensions that have marked the Government since its formation after the 2019 elections.

In fact, this same Friday Unión por la Patria surprised by announcing on Twitter the formation of a “unit list” headed by Massa as a candidate for president, as well as by Agustín Rossi, current head of the Cabinet of Ministers and candidate for vice-presidency.

A lawyer by profession and candidate for president in 2015, Massa left the Chamber of Deputies to take over the reins of the Ministry of Economy, Agriculture and Productive Development on July 28, and has now overcome the internal divisions of the ruling party to establish himself as the unity candidate of this political space.

The presentation of the leader of the Renovation Front frustrated the candidacy of the Minister of the Interior, the Kirchnerist Eduardo ‘Wado’ de Pedro, who just a day before had confirmed his intention to compete in the primaries of the ruling party and the ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli, representative of the sector most aligned to President Fernández.

Likewise, within non-Kirchnerist Peronism, the presidential candidacy of the Cordovan governor, Juan Schiaretti, stands out, who will head the list of “We do for our country” in the company of the national deputy Florencio Randazzo.

LThe still divided “Together for Change”

In the most important opposition bloc, made up of parties ranging from the center-left to the right and even with Peronists with a liberal profile, the battle for pre-candidacies has also been fierce, even among members of the same space.

This is the case of the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and the former minister Patricia Bullrich, of the Republican Proposal (PRO), Macri’s formation.

Both, considered the most prominent opposition candidates, presented as possible vice presidents members of the Radical Civic Union (UCR)the oldest party in Argentina: Rodríguez Larreta to the governor of the province of Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, and Bullrich to the former deputy Luis Petri, from Mendoza.

Miley’s figure

A mystery is the electoral weight that Javier Milei, a ‘outsider‘ cWith a groundbreaking economic discourse that entered politics in 2021 as a deputy, a position that is also held by his running mate, Victoria Villarruel.

Since then, his figure, always controversial and on the rise according to the polls, has greatly influenced the formation of strategies, both in the ruling party and in Together for Change, due to the flow of votes that Milei could monopolize for both.

At the moment, in none of the provincial elections that have been held this year has Milei’s formation obtained a remarkable percentage of support, although there are many who assure that it is difficult to extrapolate the local scenarios to the national ones.

A mystery that will begin to be resolved in the STEP, which will serve to settle not only the final formula for president and vice president of each coalition, but also the list of candidates for Congress, since in the October elections half of the Chamber of Deputies and one third of the Senate.

Source: EFE