BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Ruling Peronism has determined that only Economy Minister Sergio Massa will run in the August primary, in an unexpected twist to the deadline for pre-candidate registration to expire. Coupled with Argentina’s October general election.
“Due to institutional, political and social responsibility, our place has decided to create a list of unity that will represent us in the next elections,” he announced on his social networks on Friday under Union Por la Patria, the name chosen by the official coalition. . For the next elections, it was made up of different Peronist currents and allies.
“Our presidential candidate will be Sergio Massa and he will be accompanied by Agustin Rossi as vice-presidential candidate,” the message said. Rossi is the current chief of staff to center-left President Alberto Fernandez.
The announcement was made after the deadline for filing advance nominations closed this Saturday. Earlier in the day, Interior Minister Eduardo de Pedro and Ambassador to Brazil Daniel Cioli launched their candidacies. to contest in the Open, Simultaneous and Compulsory (PASO) primary on August 13.
Union Por La Patria reported that the two officials rejected their recommendations a day later “combined before individual”. Neither Cioli nor Di Pedro has yet spoken.
All political parties must appear in primaries, even if they have only one candidate. According to the electoral law, candidates who exceed 1.5% of the vote can run for the presidency in October.
With Massa-Rossi’s appointment, the ruling party appears to have signed an internal truce between President Fernández and his vice-president and former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The President declined to run for re-election Because he does not have much influence, the vice president will not run because he argues that he is disqualified after being sentenced to six years in prison and permanently disqualified from public office for corruption during his tenure (2007-2015).
Neither has spoken publicly about Massa’s candidacy.
Masa, 51, the ruling party’s third-stringer, took over as economy minister in the middle of last year amid a currency meltdown that has kept the government in check. The official, who has close political and business ties to the US, has weathered the storm but has been unable to control inflation, which has piled up at 42% this year.
However, amid growing social unrest, analysts agreed that the ruling party would field either Fernandez de Kirchner or Massa in the October elections.
Together for Change, the leading opposition party in the elections, this Friday made official the pairing of Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Loretta and the Governor of Jujuy Province, Gerardo Morales; On the other hand, former Defense Minister Patricia Bullrich is running in the primary alongside Louis Petrie.
Upon learning of Massa’s announcement, Fulrich took to Twitter to say, “The fireman is running as a firefighter.”
This is not the first time Massa is running for the presidency. In the 2015 general election, conservative Mauricio Macri was sworn in, and the current economy minister received 20% of the vote.
