The candidate of the Frente de Todos bloc, Alberto Fernández, has been elected President of Argentina, defeating the country’s current head of state, Mauricio Macri. With more than 96.2% of the polling stations reporting, Fernández and his running mate, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, reached 48.03% of the vote vs 40.44% for Macri, according to Argentina’s National Electoral Chamber.
On December 10, Fernandez will become the country’s ninth President since the 1983 return of democracy to Argentina, with the mission, as he himself stated, to get the country on its feet.
After a first round victory, the President-elect spoke to a large crowd of supporters who broke into applause when he thanked former President Nestor Kirchner, precisely on October 27, the ninth anniversary of the leader’s death.
Together with Cristina, he worked hard for the unity of the Peronist movement to achieve victory. She, who last May announced her candidacy for Vice President, has expressed confidence in her partner, describing him as a very conciliatory person who favors dialogue.
Reports indicate that more than 80% of voters participated in the election.
Argentina reached Election Day as a nation with its economy tied to the designs of the International Monetary Fund, facing an economic and social crisis which the people call “the Macri disaster.
It is difficult, mainly for poor and middle-income Argentines, to conceive that a country recognized for its production of grains and meat, could today have a poverty rate of 35.4%, 8.1 percentage points more than a year ago, while 25.4% of households cannot afford basic food, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC).
Mauricio Macri, who promised a totally different reality, chose to request a loan of more than $50 billion from the IMF and, of course, accepted the measures that the Fund demands from its debtors, and the people have borne the consequences of this disaster.
The financial institution itself, in its latest projections for this year, asserted that Argentina is expected to become the country with the third highest inflation in the world, with a cost of living increase of 57.3%.
In recent weeks, demonstrations expressing indignation and dissatisfaction have served as a prelude to the vote.
But the intransigence of the current President is such that he insisted he was “convinced that the political course undertaken four years ago is correct,” adding, “We were never so close to changing history forever.”
For his part, Alberto Fernández, identified as the favorite early on, stated, “We are going to advance step by step so that this changes. They have left us a country in a very bad economic situation.”
Official data indicates that 15.3 million Argentines are living below the poverty line, while prices for staple foods increased 58.3%, from 2018 to 2019.
Unemployment affected 19.3% of young people and 10.6% of the general population in the second quarter of 2019, to which must be added informal workers who represent 34% of the work force, a figure which in the case of young people rises to 60%, according to INEC
As the campaign closed, the Fernandez ticket proposed “turning the shameful page that has been written since December 10, 2015, the first day of Macri’s term in office.”
Alberto Fernández, said that “between retirees and banks, we choose retirees; between public education and banks, we choose public education.” This was the model that the people chose on October 27, when choosing the Alberto-Cristina ticket.
(Granma)