End-of-era Argentina votes on economy, political shift

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentines voted Sunday in an unprecedented presidential runoff that could end 12 years of leftist government and see the pro-market opposition seize command of Latin America's third-biggest economy.

 

Polls showed the mayor of Buenos Aires, former Boca Juniors football executive Mauricio Macri, 56, could cause an upset by beating his left-wing rival Daniel Scioli, 58, an ex-powerboating champion.

 

If Macri breaks the grip of Peronism, the broad populist movement that has dominated Argentine politics for much of the past 70 years, he could become Argentina's most economically liberal leader since the 1990s.

 

Macri is looking to capitalize on discontent among many voters after 12 years of government by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

 

"He represents a change of regime. Populism is a scourge," said Luis Nizzo, an 81-year-old retired engineer, after voting for Macri at a school in Buenos Aires.

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Don't cry for Kirchner, Argentina...

 

[Valin]

:

Buenos Aires (AFP)

 

"He represents a change of regime. Populism is a scourge," said Luis Nizzo, an 81-year-old retired engineer, after voting for Macri at a school in Buenos Aires.

 

 

 

 

Memo to the T-Bots.

[Valin]

A New Stage for Argentina?
Walter Russell Mead
Nov. 23 2015

Capping off a surprisingly strong performance in first-round voting, center-right opposition candidate Mauricio Macri won Argentina’s presidential election last night. Macri’s victory is good news—but his problems are just beginning and the country isn’t out of the woods. Bloomberg reports on the election:

(Snip)

For much of the past seventy years, Argentina has been cursed by its seventy-year fixation with a deeply corrupt, anti-liberal Peronist movement. Since 2001, the country has been ruled by the Peronist Kirchner dynasty—first husband and then wife. Macri’s win, which represents a shift away from the ineffective populism that afflicts many Latin American states, is a promising development.

 

But there will be a lot of resistance to any reforms that Macri hopes to pursue. The deep state and the inner structure of many of the country’s most powerful institutions — labor unions (both public and private sector), state-owned enterprises, the bureaucracies, political parties, and so on — remain staunchly Peronist. These organizations depend on the corrupt, clientalist politics and influence peddling that constitute the backbone of Peronist politics, and they will surely fight a war of attrition against Macri. Peronist ideas—reflexive anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism, for example—are deeply embedded in Argentine psychology and culture. That’s going to make it hard for Macri to succeed; he will be fighting his own state much of the time. That the majority of both houses in the country’s Congress remain Peronist only makes Macri’s agenda even more difficult to pursue (at least until the next elections in 2017).

 

And as if that balance of power challenge isn’t enough, the economic mess that propelled Macri’s victory will also—eventually—become his responsibility.................(Snip)