So there's presidential (and other) elections in Argentina today, which have not been mentioned yet. As is traditional, Argentina is in the midst of an economic crisis, which adds an extra little spice to the elections.
The only two viable candidates are the current president
Mauricio Macri, running for a second term, and
Alberto Fernández. Macri is a center-right businessman representing the coalition
Juntos por el Cambio ("United for Change," formerly
Cambiemos "Let's Change"), and Fernández is a left-wing lawyer representing the coalition
Frente de Todos ("Everyone's Front"). Frente de Todos is the Peronist ticket, but "Peronism" in Argentina basically doesn't mean anything at this point.
This is slightly more complicated, though, because Fernández's running mate is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, was president from 2003-2007, and she was president from 2007-2015. "Kirchnerism" as a political ideology (basically social democracy with significant state interference in the economy, protectionism, nationalization of some industries and funds, alliances with other left-wing governments in Latin America, social liberalism, and a focus on prosecuting those responsible for human rights abuses during the Dirty War, plus a touch of cult of personality) remains quite popular in Argentina, but Kirchner herself has some teensy issues, namely being horrifically and comically corrupt (plus some other problems like being awfully amiable with Hezbollah and Iran regarding the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in 1994, the
mysterious death of a prosecutor who had accused her of misdeeds related to the AMIA investigation, and a history during her presidency of attempted muzzling of press outlets that were negative toward her government, excessive attempts to influence the judiciary, and more). She has something like a dozen corruption cases pending against her, but since she's a sitting senator she has immunity so they haven't gone anywhere yet. Rather than risking trying to win the election at the head of the ticket, she chose Fernández -- who was Néstor's chief of staff for many years but more recently had become somewhat of a critic of Cristina Kirchner -- to run instead. Everyone basically knows that she's the actual one running for Frente de Todos, but Fernández is a convenient mask/shield and lackey. What I'm still unclear on is what, officially, Frente de Todos's platform is; Fernández usually just spends his time criticizing Macri for being a bad president who's a liar liar pants on fire, and saying how super awesome Argentina is going to be under new leadership. Will they nationalize various industries again? Try to cozy up with Venezuela and Cuba and Iran and anyone who is anti-America again? Menace the media again? Or will Fernández genuinely be his own man and go the more moderate route that Frente de Todos is hoping people are
assuming he represents? One of Juntos por el Cambio's main campaign talking points, at any rate, is that Argentina will "turn into the next Venezuela" if Fernández and Kirchner win.
Macri, meanwhile, came to power promising neoliberal economic reforms to help encourage foreign investment and salvage the economy after the Kirchners spent money like there was no tomorrow and instituted currency controls and refused to pay back Argentina's debt. Many of the measures he took were probably necessary, but have resulted in the economy being significantly
worse than when he took office. It's likely that some of his reforms and the free trade agreement he helped broker between Mercosur and the EU (assuming it actually is ratified, which is in some doubt) will/would eventually lead to improvements in some areas in the long term, but that obviously doesn't help him, or regular Argentines, right now. (At least he has razor sharp political skills, so when he suffered a major and shocking defeat in the primary elections in August and the markets panicked and the value of the peso and Argentine stocks plummeted, he initially reacted by blaming the voters for being such dumbasses, before a day later realizing his mistake and trying to walk that back.) Socially, Macri is also kind of center-right; his platform is fine with LGBTQ rights, but opposes legalizing abortion (which is a
huge political topic in Argentina at the moment; Fernández supports legalizing it).
All the polls, as well as the result of the primary elections, suggest that Fernández will beat Macri comfortably -- voters may distrust Kirchner's bald corruption, but they care more at this point about being able to eat -- but the question is whether he can win outright or if it will go to a runoff. Either way, ironically, Fernández winning is almost certainly going to lead to the markets once again panicking, resulting in the peso's value
once again crashing further and the economy getting even worse (though the peso has weakened a fair bit over the last week, so that may be the markets pricing in Fernández's win already? idk). At least Argentina doesn't have a history of horrific economic failures! (And this is of course also happening in the context of various massive protest movements throughout the continent; of course these are due to different causes, but it's still probably not helpful, if the Argentine economy completely collapses to like, 2001 levels, to have the example of Chile sitting
right there for everyone to be inspired by.)
There are a few other candidates in the presidential election but they have no shot at winning. I don't know much about them beyond watching them in the two presidential debates and very briefly reading up on them, but these are my EXPERT TAKEAWAYS based on that:
- Roberto Lavagna is a centrist whose basic position seems to be "can't we all just get along?"
- José Luis Espert is an economist whose basic position is that Macri is not nearly neoliberal enough
- Juan José Gómez Centurión is an insane Falklands/Malvinas veteran (and one of the members of the Carapintadas mutinies in the early years of Argentine democracy following the dictatorship, which led to the amnesty laws protecting the perpetrators of the Dirty War from any consequences for years; he's also denied that there was any concerted plan by the junta to suppress and murder leftists, although at least he has said he thinks the coup was a terrible idea and the members of the junta were inept...) whose basic position is that the REAL problem in Argentina is that some people are in favor of abortion and that all the other problems derive from this moral rot
- Nicolás del Caño is an insane leftist whose basic position seems to be "I'm a stereotypical hippie" and also that the IMF loans shouldn't be repaid, because of course it worked out so well the last time Argentina humiliatingly defaulted on a massive debt, and would surely lead to lots of foreign investment in the country for years to come!