Ignacio Miri
09/11/2021 10:14 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 9/11/2021 10:14 PM
The Argentines will define this Sunday
who will be the candidates who will compete in November
, in the election that will serve to renew half of the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Chamber of Senators.
Thus, the vote will have, as always happens with the PASO, a
limited institutional consequence
, since in this instance it is not defined who will occupy the seats in Congress but, simply, the players who will be able to participate in the general election.
However, today's result
will be decisive to know what opinion citizens have about the first two years of the administration
of President Alberto Fernández, marked by the pandemic and the response to mitigate it and also by the worsening of the bad economic situation that found when he succeeded Mauricio Macri.
The vote count will also serve to measure how much weight each member of the
Frente de Todos
has today
.
That is why the comparison between the votes that the Buenos Aires ballot of the ruling party headed by Victoria Tolosa Paz will get today and those that Cristina Kirchner obtained in the 2017 PASO in her candidacy for national senator with Unidad Ciudadana will be decisive.
That time, the current vice president won
34% of the vote
, and was not accompanied by the Justicialist Party or by the force of Sergio Massa.
Alberto Fernández was not with her either.
Therefore, the votes that Tolosa Paz
obtains above
that 34% may be valued as the contribution made to the Front of All the minor partners, including
the President himself
.
If the result of Tolosa Paz remains close to 34%, the Frente de Todos will enter a period of
reevaluation of its internal dynamics
and reformulation of the government itself, and will also face the unknown about its future, because the unity of Peronism will have lost the characteristic that made it possible: the need to win elections.
If the harvest far exceeds that number, the Frente de Todos will be consolidated and strengthened for the second half of the term.
Of course, the result will also be read taking into account the projection it may have for the generals in November.
The Frente de Todos, if one considers recent history, usually gets
the same number of votes in the PASO as in the general election
, with which a narrow victory will leave the fight open forwards.
In Juntos por el Cambio, a dispute is also taking place this year to determine who
leads the second generation of the alliance
after the presidency of Mauricio Macri.
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta has already said that he wants to compete for the presidency in 2023, but radicalism has already warned that he intends to take that candidacy away from the PRO.
The head of the Buenos Aires government is better positioned in that race and that is why, for the first time, he set foot outside the Federal Capital to promote the candidacy of Diego Santilli in the province.
Radicalism managed to oppose Santilli with the bet on Facundo Manes, a debutant in the electoral competition, and
all the national leaders of the party
put aside the disputes that they maintain in the other provinces to support in a unified way that Buenos Aires bet.
In the City, Rodríguez Larreta will also put his leadership at stake.
There he drives María Eugenia Vidal - contrary to the original opinion of Mauricio Macri- and the former Buenos Aires governor will compete against Ricardo López Murphy and Adolfo Rubinstein.
For Peronism, the candidate will be Leandro Santoro, and for the Left Front Miriam Bregman has the best chance of staying with the candidacy.
The most innovative appearance in the Buenos Aires election is that of the economist Javier Milei, who assembled
a right-wing force
that will also have a Buenos Aires candidate, José Luis Espert.
If they narrow their differences, Milei and Espert could become a third force in Argentine politics.
In the Province, Florencio Randazzo wants to get that same place, based on an electorate of Peronists who do not want to vote for Kirchnerism.
Those two districts, the Capital and the Province, but especially the Buenos Aires territory, will be
the scene of the dispute
over the configuration of the two largest coalitions.
This happens because in other highly populated provinces, such as Córdoba and Santa Fe, there will be competition
within the coalitions
but there, for example in Juntos por el Cambio, the payrolls gather candidates from the parties but mixed with each other.
As the result of the election does not determine seats and only settle internal differences, as soon as the results of the provisional ballot begin to be released tonight, a battle of readings and interpretations will begin.
The simplest will be the one that arises from the sum of the votes obtained by each coalition.
As the Frente de Todos has
competitive inmates
in very few districts -of the five main districts only in Santa Fe- for the comparison to have any possibility of projecting towards November, it will be necessary to add those that get the lists of Together for Change in each province.
In turn, as the midterm elections do not have a unified category at the national level,
the results in the 24 elections will have
to be added together to determine whether the Frente de Todos obtained more or fewer votes than Together for Change.
Even taking into account that they are elections of a different nature, this sum could be compared with the STEP of the 2019 presidential election, to find out if the two coalitions - which today have the same configuration as two years ago - gained or lost weight in the political scene.
In this national competition, of course, the evaluation made by voters on the assessment of responsibilities in the economic crisis and in
the management of the pandemic
will have a great weight
.
A number that will have to be followed carefully is that of electoral participation.
Despite the fact that the PASO are
as mandatory as the general ones
, the little interest that this electoral body usually arouses must be added this year the fears that the coronavirus generated among some voters.
To combat this, the electoral justice redesigned the voting mechanism, made
more places
available to the registry
to vote
and put together a protocol that will probably slow down the act.
In turn, in addition to the lists to determine the 127 deputies throughout the country and 24 senators in 8 provinces, in 9 districts -among them Buenos Aires, the Federal Capital and Santa Fe- the lists of candidates for the provincial legislatures will be assembled. and municipal.
That combination of a pandemic and list proliferation can cause results to be delayed.