Opposition presidential candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, left, and his running mate Gerardo Morales, governor of Jujuy province, walk to a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/ Natacha Pisarenko) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Opposition presidential candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta walks to a news conference with Gerardo Morales, governor of Jujuy province, not pictured, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Opposition presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, left, and her running mate Luis Petri arrive for a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Opposition presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich holds a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The pairing formed by the mayor of the capital, of the Republican Proposal (PRO), and the head of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) -both parties that are members of the opposition coalition Together for Change- will compete on August 13 in the primary and mandatory elections in which the electoral formulas of all the Argentine political forces qualified to participate in the general ones will be defined.
The presidential elections, in which Peronism is risking its permanence in power, will define the successor to President Alberto Fernández, who will not stand for re-election in a context of accelerating inflation.
Rodríguez Larreta and Morales are leaders of political weight in their respective parties and have several years of executive management. In the case of the leader of the UCR and governor of the province of Jujuy, his career as provincial deputy and national senator is added.
The mayor, considered a moderate, adds a governor openly at odds with the center-left current within Peronism that answers to the current vice president and former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015).
When presenting his candidate for vice president, Rodriguez Larreta told reporters that he shares “this passion for doing, solving problems” and stressed that “he is a man whose pulse does not tremble” to defend his convictions.
The governor is an active defender of the prohibition of blocking streets and routes as a form of protest, one of the axes of the electoral debate. This position was embodied in a reform of the Jujuy constitution that he promoted and was recently approved in the provincial legislature with the support of various parties, including Peronism.
However, the new provincial magna carta triggered violent protests by left-wing parties, organizations related to Kirchnerism, and indigenous groups. The demonstrations, which left dozens injured and detained, were repressed excessively by the police, according to complaints from humanitarian organizations.
Rodríguez Larreta defended the actions of Morales in the conflict and questioned that before his government the people of Jujuy “suffered pressure (threats)” from groups related to Kirchnerism.
In turn, the governor referred to the candidate for president as a “management man” and pointed out that “difficult times are coming that we will face together with courage, dialogue and also with firmness to make decisions.”
In the primaries, the formula of Rodríguez Larreta and Morales will have as its main competitor within the opposition coalition that made up of the former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and Luis Petri, former deputy of the UCR and scholar of the fight against crime, one of the greatest concerns of Argentines.
Bullrich is an exponent of the hard wing of the PRO whose reference is to the former conservative president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and is in some polls better positioned than the mayor of Buenos Aires for the presidential elections.
The opponent said that she will put the “best economic team” to combat inflation, which in May was 7.8% and 114.2% in the year-on-year comparison, at the presentation of her running mate.
“Argentina no longer gives more. If we were in a normal country, an administrator or an economist could solve the problems of this country. For this moment, leaders of conviction are needed”, said Bullrich.
Petri was one of the authors of a legislative project in 2020 that sought to get political power to support the security forces in their actions, amid criticism for several cases of abuse in the use of force.
The radical insisted that “institutional support must be given to the security forces that risk their lives to defend the Argentines.”
His initiative sought to modify an article of the Penal Code to establish “a legal presumption” that would grant legal certainty to members of the security forces so that when they acted against the crime “whether on duty or not, they know that the law protects them.”
Other parties are settling their pre-candidates, such as the government coalition Unión por la Patria. Interior Minister Eduardo De Pedro, son of those who disappeared during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and political godson of Fernández de Kirchner, announced his presidential candidacy on Thursday.
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AP journalist Débora Rey participated in this note.
FUENTE: Associated Press
