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ARGENTINA | 14-10-2022 08:38

Macri says he’s not registered to run in 2023

Former president and PRO leader indicates he has no intention of running for Argentina’s top office in next year’s federal election.

Former president Mauricio Macri says he has not registered to compete in the 2023 presidential election, claiming publicly on Thursday that "it is time to fight for ideas and values, not for oneself.”

"I'm on the pitch, I'll always be on the pitch. I'm not going to abandon people. I feel like I planted the seed, but now the tree belongs to all Argentines," said the Juntos por el Cambio leader in an interview with Radio Mitre Córdoba.

Macri coupled comments about his personal political trajectory with a scathing rebuke of Argentina’s current government, insisting that "nobody governs today, neither Alberto Fernández, nor Cristina [Fernández de] Kirchner, nor [Sergio] Massa: today they only pass things on, generating patches, trying not to run out of dollars."

The PRO leader went on to complain "there is no plan, there is no direction and that generated a total loss of confidence. Without confidence, the engine of investment that leads to employment is not generated." 

Given this analysis, he demanded that the government sit down with its economic team to "correct the mess.”

"If they left the country to me in the third basement, next year they are going to leave it in the seventh basement: inflation of more than 100 percent, impossible spending, public companies losing fortunes, tariffs at 15 percent of what they are worth. Everything is upside down again, like in 2015, but worse,” he complained.

And he continued: "I am not optimistic about the present, but I am about the future, because there is clarity. What has changed are the Argentines, who began to see clearly that if we do not bet on the culture of work, a meritocratic society, compete, that each one finds their place and be a protagonist, that we put the State in a place where it does not suffocate us".

Macri’s statements come just days before the release of his new book, Para qué, which is set to hit shelves on October 18. The book follows Macri’s 2021 release of Primer tiempo, and is a sweeping work of political introspection on topics ranging from his management of the Boca Juniors football club to the handling of the 2004 Cromañón nightclub tragedy.

In what has been an especially eventful month — punctuated by a high-profile trip to Spain where he forcefully criticised the influence of Peronism on Argentina — the former president also underwent prostate surgery Tuesday morning at the Trinidad Sanatorium in Palermo. The intervention was previously scheduled, and Macri is recovering satisfactorily, according to hospital officials.

 

— TIMES/NA

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