While the jockeying in Buenos Aires Province is likely to continue for some weeks to come, Misiones votes tomorrow so that will be this column’s priority. Although far from enjoying the primacy of the former (the only district with an eight-digit electorate), Misiones is among the seven provinces with a seven-digit electorate – not that tomorrow’s vote will be in seven digits, given this year’s trend of low turnouts.
The voting for provincial deputies is more likely to be a landslide for the local ruling party than any electoral earthquake (although cascade might be the more appropriate metaphor here, given the world-famous Iguazú falls) without dictating the national midterms in October in any way if the last time Misiones went to the polls in 2023 is any guide – barely 3,000 voted for the libertarian unknowns at provincial level in May whereas Javier Milei led the field with 42 percent in October’s first round of the general elections and 56 percent in November’s presidential run-off.
There is a compelling case for arguing that the imminence of tomorrow’s elections was the reason why the Misiones senators Carlos Arce and Sonia Rojas Decut played a decisive role in the defeat of the ‘ficha limpia’ (“clean slate”) bill banning the candidacies of those with upheld convictions for corruption after having pledged their support immediately ahead of that vote. On that occasion a month ago, the La Libertad Avanza (LLA) caucus could hardly afford the negative image of defending the impunity of the caste by rejecting this bill (and nor did they) but they were secretly craving its failure – with their motives generally attributed to keeping ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner politically alive as the ideal electoral punching-bag (and also to deny Silvia Lospennato, the PRO candidate in this capital, brownie points for having sponsored this bill) but the libertarians may well have been also covering their own backs in anticipation, especially from the way the investigation of the $LIBRA cryptocurrency scam keeps ticking with a New York judge freezing US$280 million of its dubious profits on May 30. Since Senators Arce and Rojas Decut voted at the behest of Misiones strongman Carlos Rovira, there is every reason to suppose that the latter saved Milei the odium of defending impunity by placing the onus on his own representatives, thus eluding the fate of Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri and making tomorrow’s voting the target of the national government’s considerable firepower.
Tomorrow’s election will be to renew half of the 40-seat provincial legislature. This is totally dominated by the Frente Renovador de Concordia with 25 of the 40 seats, nominally headed by Governor Hugo Passalacqua (originally Radical) but in real terms run by Rovira who has been Speaker for almost two decades following two terms as a Peronist governor between 1999 and 2007. The opposition consists of nine seats for the Unión Cívica Radical (five) and PRO (four) national parties with two each for the more local parties Activar, Partido Agrario y Social Frente de Todos and the Frente Encuentro Popular Agrario Social para la Victoria. These three parties all have Peronist roots with the latter two more Kirchnerite while Activar responds to the former two-term governor Ramón Puerta (president of Argentina for two days just before the Christmas of 2001), far more aligned with Carlos Menem than with the Kirchners both by dint of generation (1991-1999) and ideology while this party backed the Juntos por el Cambio coalition in more recent years – Activar suffers the massive discredit of one of its two provincial deputies having been the notorious paedophile Germán Kiczka (now unseated), which may imperil its survival, while the other is Puerta’s son Pedro.
Of these six parties, only Frente Renovador de Concordia is running under the same label with the opinion polls giving them as much as two-thirds of the vote. Although the strongest opposition party until now, the Radicals are in the greatest disarray with their fervently pro-Milei national deputy Martín Arjol spurned by both the UCR and LLA, running his own libertarian (Partido Libertario) list. Totally adrift, the local Radicals and PRO have teamed up in the Frente Unidos por el Futuro while the two Kirchnerite blocs have joined forces in an Agrario y Social ticket representing small farmers more than Peronism with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner preferring to sit this one out rather than suffer humiliation – Activar dares not speak its name with the Kiczka scandal. The strongest newcomer is La Libertad Avanza with national government backing under Diego Hartfield, running second behind the local ruling party but given less than five percent in the opinion polls. Unidos por el Futuro and Arjol are not far behind with over four percent while Agrario y Social is given three percent – with such percentages all these opposition parties would be lucky to win more than a seat. Seven other lists (including the leftist Partido del Obrero and the pro-life Por la Vida y los Valores) share less than five percent – if they even top one percent in tomorrow’s voting, they will be mentioned in next weekend’s column.
The provincial capital of Posadas and nine other cities (including Puerto Iguazú) will also be voting for municipal councils. The suffrage for provincial and municipal voting differs – whereas anybody aged over 16 may vote at provincial level (only compulsory between the ages of 18 and 70), voters for municipal councillors must be at least 18, literate in Spanish, legally employed and with at least three years of permanent residence in that locality. The ley de lemas system of simultaneous primaries and elections is also a particular feature of municipal voting but with the PASO primaries being suspended everywhere, this is to all intents and purposes the method at all levels, increasing fragmentation.
Next Saturday we will analyse the Misiones results while also following campaign developments elsewhere.
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