The results of Argentina’s midterm elections Sunday can be considered to be a victory for President Mauricio Macri and his Cambiemos (“Let’s Change”) alliance over the country’s traditional but divided Peronistas and his predecessor as president, for eight years, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
The results of Argentina’s midterm elections Sunday can be considered to be a victory for President Mauricio Macri and his Cambiemos (“Let’s Change”) alliance over the country’s traditional but divided Peronistas and his predecessor as president, for eight years, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
Half the seats in the lower house of Argentina’s parliament and a third of the seats in its Senate were up for grabs. Cambiemos gained 30 — 21 in the lower house and nine in the Senate, even though Fernandez won a seat in the Buenos Aires legislative district, fortunate for her since the victory will save her from imprisonment if she is found guilty on corruption charges pending against her.
Macri’s and Cambiemos’ victory can be seen as a green light for him to proceed with useful reforms he has made in the sometimes erratic, sometimes stumbling Argentinian economy. Since he became president in late 2015, he has disassembled exchange controls, lowered export taxes, devalued the Argentinian peso, taken steps to facilitate foreign investment and started to reduce hideously high subsidies to utilities and public services.
On the basis of his victory, Macri is expected to proceed with labor, pension and tax reforms that are expected to move Argentina further along the road toward economic health.
A measure of the uphill battle is the fact inflation has fallen, but from more than 40 percent to a still ruinous 22 percent. Major problems remaining include high unemployment, a large off-the-record informal economy and a large government budget deficit, worse than America’s.
In overall Latin American terms, Macri’s and Cambiemos’ victory could be considered a defeat for the region’s left, although these designations are hard to apply to Latin American countries’ sometimes idiosyncratic national politics. In Argentina, for example, Macri’s victory and Fernandez’s and the Peronistas’ defeat can be seen as another healing step away from the heritage of the rule of President Juan Domingo Peron and his wives, Eva and Isabel, which took Argentina from wealth to succeeding years of economic disaster.
Americans should welcome an Argentina under Macri’s leadership on the road to political and economic stability, particularly as Brazil staggers under serious economic problems and widespread charges of corruption, and Venezuela suffers ever more deeply from misgovernment and chaos.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette