Debate about insecurity sneaks into the closure of the Argentine electoral campaign

The debate on the unsafety slipped into the closing of the Argentine electoral campaign with a view to the primaries that are held next Sunday, after the main candidates suspend their final rallies due to the violent death of an 11-year-old girl in the province of Buenos Aires.

Despite the fact that several candidates for the Presidency advocate in their speeches for a heavy hand and repression to end crime in the South American country, the economic reality of Argentina is the one that focused a good part of the political addresses both in public events and in interviews in the media.

However, the murder of Morena Domínguez, an 11-year-old girl, in the Buenos Aires town of Lanús, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, when she was going to school this Wednesday and was approached from a motorcycle by two people who wanted to steal her backpack, suddenly paralyzed the electoral campaign and served to bring the problem of insecurity to the forefront.

The two pre-candidates most identified with that tough speech to curb crime, former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and the ultra-liberal Javier Milei, spoke the day before about the country’s situation in terms of insecurity.

“We cannot continue living with so much anguish and fear. This no longer works. They transformed Argentina into an unlivable country”wrote on Twitter the candidate for the opposition alliance Juntos por el Cambio, in which he competes with the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, more moderate in his program.

For her part, Milei indicated on the same social network that she is looking for “End with this model that defends criminals and return to the only model that works: the repression of crime without hesitation.”

This Thursday, shortly before the public farewell with white balloons through the streets that the girl’s neighbors gave to the funeral procession, the Argentine Minister of Security, Aníbal Fernández, claimed that this was not his jurisdiction and blurted out: “I don’t have to get involved. The reality is that we don’t participate and I can’t tell you what I don’t participate in”.

For his part, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, who aspires to revalidate his position in October, declared in a radio interview that the case “crudely exposes a set of problems that are slow and difficult to solve” and that he did not want to talk “of these issues with easy slogans”, alluding to his Security Minister, Sergio Berni, who said that “Situations of this type are easily resolved in Argentina.”

This Wednesday, Morena Domínguez suffered a robbery from a motorcycle (by the vulgarly called ‘motor jets’), was dragged along the ground and, according to the autopsy, received a “strong abdominal blow”which caused internal bleeding, which caused her death at the Evita hospital in Lanús, to which she was transferred after the attack.

In the case, there are two people arrested, accused of “homicide in occasion of robbery in real contest with concealment”.

According to official data from the Ministry of Security, Argentina registered a rate of 4.2 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, 7.2% less than the previous year.

However, the situation is more serious in provinces of the country such as Santa Fe (center), where the figure increased to 11.3 victims per 100,000 inhabitants, especially due to the incidence of organized crime linked to drug trafficking in the city of Rosario.

In the province of Buenos Aires, the global figure was lower (3.7), but in the most populous district in the country, with almost 11 million inhabitants, of which 7.3 live in only 10 municipalities -one of them Lanús-, there are outbreaks Highly dangerous due to the socioeconomic context.

Argentina will hold this Sunday the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections, from which the candidates who will compete in the general elections on October 22 will emerge.

Source: EFE