7. IN REBUKE TO KIRCHNER, ARGENTINES ELECT OPPOSITION FIGURE AS PRESIDENT (The New York Times)
By Simon Romero and Jonathan Gilbert
23 November 2015
BUENOS AIRES — Argentine voters handed a victory to Mauricio Macri in the country’s presidential election on Sunday, delivering a mandate to an opposition political figure seeking to roll back some of the protectionist economic measures of the departing president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
With votes from 99 percent of polling places counted, Mr. Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires and a former president of Boca Juniors, one of Argentina’s most popular soccer teams, was leading with 51.4 percent of the vote, according to election officials, against 48.5 percent for Daniel Scioli, a former speedboat racer and vice president under former President Néstor Kirchner, who died in 2010. Mr. Scioli conceded defeat on national television on Sunday night.
Running a largely nonconfrontational campaign in a society that has grown increasingly polarized under Mrs. Kirchner, who succeeded her husband in 2007, Mr. Macri, 56, stunned the political establishment in October by forcing the race into a runoff and maintaining his surge in recent weeks. He ran to the right of his rivals, blending plans to overhaul the economy and promote the tolerance of various points of view on social issues.
Mr. Macri’s relatively narrow victory revealed deep fissures in Argentina after 12 years of governance by Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, with many voters expressing concern over the direction of the economy and frustration with Mrs. Kirchner’s blistering attacks on critics in the news media, business establishments and rival political parties.
”Cristina divided the country and destroyed it morally,” said Dimitri Javakhishvili, 67, an immigrant from Georgia who works as a doorman at a building here in the neighborhood of Recoleta. Mr. Javakhishvili acknowledged that Mr. Macri could face challenges in trying to govern when Mrs. Kirchner’s political movement moves into the opposition.
Still, Mr. Javakhishvili said, ”At least he’s something new; he’s something fresh.”
Not everyone here shares such views. Graffiti and posters have appeared across Buenos Aires demonizing Mr. Macri, outnumbering on many streets the campaign posters expressing support for Mr. Scioli, who balanced lukewarm support from Mrs. Kirchner’s loyal followers with claims that social spending could be sustained despite galloping inflation and declining private investment.
One example of anti-Macri sentiment, alluding to fears that he will govern for a privileged few, simply says ”Macrisis.”
Mr. Macri, the scion of a wealthy family, has tried to combat perceptions that he would reverse the government’s leftist policies, saying he will keep the nationalized companies like Aerolíneas Argentinas and YPF, Argentina’s largest oil company, under state control. His economic advisers have also sought to tamp down fears around contentious economic issues like a potential currency devaluation.
In addition to grappling with inflation and currency controls aimed at curbing capital flight, Mr. Macri will now face the challenge of governing with much of his opposition under the sway of Peronism, the ideologically diverse political grouping that has dominated Argentine politics for decades.
Yet while Mrs. Kirchner’s leftist faction has emerged as a dominant group within Peronism, with the president herself signaling that she planned to remain politically active after stepping down in December, Mr. Macri’s margin of victory will help him in the months ahead, analysts said.
”He will be able to start to work with authority,” said Juan Cruz Díaz, a director at the Cefeidas Group, a political risk analysis firm. But he added that Mr. Scioli’s performance still demonstrated the underlying strength of the Peronist political movement. ”It’s not a devastating margin of difference,” Mr. Díaz said. ”With a fatigued government and an erratic campaign, it’s a good performance. They are far from dead.”
Many political analysts in Argentina doubted that Mr. Macri would make it this far, with skepticism abounding when he began assembling his movement to the right of many rivals more than a decade ago.
He ventured into a part of Argentina’s political spectrum that had previously been associated with conservative Peronists or disgraced figures in the military establishment.
But over time, he honed his negotiating skills as the mayor of Buenos Aires, while insisting during this year’s campaign that he did not plan to roll back popular social programs introduced during the Kirchners’ presidencies, like cash subsidies for poor families and ”Soccer for Everybody,” a government initiative that covers soccer broadcasting fees so people can watch matches free.
Mr. Macri seemed to gain the upper hand after mounting a door-to-door campaign that helped his supporters win important provincial and local races in October, including the prized post of the governor of Buenos Aires Province, now held by Mr. Scioli but won by María Eugenia Vidal, a top adviser to Mr. Macri and deputy mayor who focused largely on antipoverty programs in the municipal government.
Many voters have also expressed fatigue with Mrs. Kirchner’s governing style and reports of corruption among her prominent supporters.
Signaling that she may not plan to remain subdued after leaving office, Mrs. Kirchner issued a torrent of messages on Twitter on Sunday celebrating her foreign and domestic policies. One message even seemed like a warning to Mr. Macri, who has vowed to improve Argentina’s strained ties with the United States and review a contentious deal with China to build a nuclear reactor.
”The person with the responsibility of leading the homeland should know the right place of the Argentine republic in a multipolar world,” Mrs. Kirchner wrote.
Mr. Macri’s ”wager wasn’t an easy one,” the Argentine writer Martín Caparrós wrote in the Spanish newspaper El País. But Mr. Macri’s ambitions were aided, Mr. Caparrós said, by ”12 years of rule by a couple that spoke as if from the left but acted in their own interests.”
Some voters, however, said that their fears over the threats to the government’s antipoverty programs outweighed criticism of the Kirchners or concerns that Mr. Scioli, viewed as friendlier to the business establishment, was not as radical as they had hoped.
”I’m voting for the lesser of two evils,” said Teo Levín, 25, a medical student who explained that he was voting for Mr. Scioli with gritted teeth. ”I understand that Scioli will adopt come conservative economic policies, but he won’t destroy the political model. Macri will. He’s the worst thing in the world.”
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8. UPSTART’S RISE HAS ARGENTINA CONSIDERING POLITICAL SHIFT (The New York Times)
By Simon Romero and Jonathan Gilbert
21 November 2015
HUMAHUACA, Argentina — Winding down a presidential campaign that is upending this country’s politics, Mauricio Macri dutifully chewed on coca leaves, a symbol of the resilience of indigenous culture in this remote corner of northern Argentina. Raising his voice barely above a murmur, he asked Mother Earth for the wisdom to guide Argentina down the ”righteous path.”
With a sphinxlike smile, Mr. Macri deflected questions about the depth of the adjustments to economic policy he plans to make if he wins the election on Sunday.
This scene on Thursday would have been nearly unthinkable just a month ago, when Daniel Scioli, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s preferred successor, was expected to glide into the presidency. But after mounting a frenetic campaign that crisscrossed Argentina and pushed the race into a runoff, taking him into what were believed to be Mrs. Kirchner’s strongholds, Mr. Macri is emerging as the front-runner.
”Everything is possible in politics, especially when those in power wield their influence with arrogance,” said Aída Villalpando, 49, a community activist who traveled from the provincial capital, San Salvador de Jujuy, to show support for Mr. Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires. Ms. Villalpando said Mrs. Kirchner’s supporters had intimidated voters, and she cited their actions as among the main reasons she planned to vote for Mr. Macri.
With polls showing Mr. Macri in the lead, the possibility that he could win has many gauging the impact of such a shift in Argentina. Since 2003, the country has been under the sway of Mrs. Kirchner, one of its strongest leaders in decades, and her husband, Néstor Kirchner, who died in 2010. Under them, Argentina recovered from an economic crisis as the authorities asserted more control over the economy, deepened energy subsidies and clashed with the news media.
Mr. Macri, 56, has vowed to roll back such policies, pointing to galloping inflation and intensifying political divisiveness, while running a largely nonconfrontational campaign seeking to soften his patrician image as the scion of a wealthy Argentine family.
His opponent, Mr. Scioli, 58, a former speedboat racer and the departing governor of Buenos Aires Province, has increasingly gone on the offensive, calling Mr. Macri ”a snob from Barrio Parque,” one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Buenos Aires.
Mr. Scioli accuses Mr. Macri of concealing plans to put in place market-oriented policies, which many Argentines blame for an economic crisis in 2001 and 2002, and of cozying up to international financial institutions from which Mrs. Kirchner has distanced the country. ”Don’t let them fool us under the slogan of ‘change,’ ” Mr. Scioli said Thursday in a closing campaign speech. ”Because it’s a lie; it’s structural adjustment and a pact with the International Monetary Fund.”
Stunning a political establishment that had grown accustomed in recent years to blistering attacks on critics by Mrs. Kirchner and her supporters, Mr. Macri has largely avoided such tactics during his campaign. In an interview with journalists here in Jujuy Province on Thursday, he spoke in a low monotone.
”I’ll have a balanced economic cabinet,” Mr. Macri said of his choices for top economic policy posts, declining to say who would fill them while drawing a contrast with previous governments on the left and the right in which star economists have wielded substantial power over other ministers.
Dressed in a blue shirt without a tie, Mr. Macri greeted other questions with the barest of smiles while sitting in a hotel lobby. At the end of a long campaign, he seemed neither exhausted nor dazed, resembling instead someone who might have emerged from a session of meditation.
Hewing to his plan to restore investor confidence in the economy, Mr. Macri calmly criticized what he views as the unreliability of official statistics in Argentina. He avoided mentioning Mrs. Kirchner or Mr. Scioli by name. Touching for a moment on a politically delicate subject, he said he planned to review a deal with China to build a nuclear reactor in Argentina.
Some political analysts question how a Macri presidency would deal with Peronism, the ideologically diverse political grouping that has long dominated Argentine politics. Still, other analysts say that Mr. Macri has made strides in reshaping Argentina’s political landscape, especially with the victory of a rising star in his party, María Eugenia Vidal, who was recently elected to the coveted governorship of Buenos Aires Province, a Peronist stronghold. Ms. Vidal’s triumph, they said, has lifted a veil of doubt about Mr. Macri’s ability to govern beyond the city of Buenos Aires, a pocket of relative prosperity enclosed by poorer sprawl not covered by his administration. Those surrounding areas are home to nearly a quarter of Argentina’s population. Crucially, mayoral races across the province were also won by Mr. Macri’s candidates, easing fears of struggles between Ms. Vidal and influential Peronist power brokers.
”The geography of Argentine politics has changed,” said Julio Burdman, an Argentine politics professor.
Some are even suggesting that the only issue at play on Sunday is Mr. Macri’s margin of victory. A poll by Elypsis, a political research firm that accurately predicted the first-round result, gave Mr. Macri 47 percent of the vote, against 39 percent for Mr. Scioli, with 11 percent undecided. The survey, taken on Nov. 16 and 17 in interviews with 2,200 people around the country, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
A small margin of victory may not be enough to give Mr. Macri a mandate, wrote Carlos Pagni, a political commentator, in the newspaper La Nación. ”Macri needs a conclusive victory to carry out reforms that would allow him to relaunch the economy,” Mr. Pagni wrote.
Still, others questioned the reliability of the polls when so many failed to predict Mr. Macri’s strong showing in the first round. The race remained volatile even after the candidates formally wrapped up their campaigning on Thursday, with Mr. Scioli contending that he had the support of Pope Francis, who is from Argentina and ranks among the country’s most popular figures. Francis has urged his countrymen ”to vote according to their conscience.”
Jaime Durán Barba, an Ecuadorean campaign strategist for Mr. Macri, disputed Francis’ importance, speaking in favor of decriminalizing abortion and telling reporters on the sidelines of Mr. Macri’s coca-chewing ritual that ”a pope doesn’t influence more than 10 votes in a country.”
Mr. Macri reacted on Twitter, saying Mr. Durán Barba’s statements ”do not represent my thinking.”
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9. ARGENTINA ELECTS CENTER-RIGHT PRESIDENT, REPUDIATING FERNANDEZ DE KIRCHNER (Los Angeles Times)
By Andres D’Alessandro and Chris Kraul
November 22, 2015
Riding a wave of voter discontent over a stagnant economy, Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri won Argentina’s presidential runoff election Sunday as voters repudiated the policies of the departing president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
With roughly two-thirds of the country’s ballots counted, Macri, a center-right candidate, was leading with 54% of the vote, giving him a comfortable margin over Daniel Scioli, Fernandez’s handpicked candidate, who had 46%.
Scioli conceded defeat shortly before 10 p.m. and Fernandez called Macri to congratulate him and arrange a meeting on Tuesday.
“The popular will has shown itself by electing a new president, Mauricio Macri,” Scioli said in an appearance at his campaign headquarters in Buenos Aires. “I called him to wish him success for the benefit of the country.”
All major exit polls had Macri winning. A final tally is expected Monday.
A former president of a professional soccer club, Macri, 56, is mayor of the country’s capital and largest city. He has promised to jettison much of Fernandez’s left-leaning economic policies, which critics say have led to 28% inflation, stagnant growth and a drying up of foreign investment.
“This is an enormous joy and I feel that we are living a historic day that will change our lives,” Macri said after voting with his wife at a school in the capital’s Palermo district. “I hope Argentina is about to enter a new stage.”
Recent voter preference polls gave Macri, who heads the center-right PRO coalition, leads of up to 12 percentage points against Scioli, who as Victory Front party leader is the governor of Buenos Aires state and a former professional boat racer who lost his right arm in a racing accident.
In the first round of voting on Oct. 25, Scioli tallied 37% of votes cast, ahead of Macri’s 34%. Congressman Sergio Massa finished third at 21%. Although Massa declined to throw his weight behind either of the top two finishers, a majority of his support had been expected to go to Macri.
Voters were reacting to 12 years of “kirchnerismo” – the interventionist policies of Fernandez, who has been in office since 2007, and those of her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, who served a four-year term starting in 2003.
A sign of Fernandez’s waning electoral strength was the loss of the Buenos Aires governorship in October to opposition candidate Maria Eugenia Vidal, who will succeed Scioli. It was the first election since 1987 that a Peronist –the name given to followers of populist President Juan Peron and his wife Eva – has not won the country’s most populous state.
Macri has been vague on specific proposals but has said he would make government more “intelligent” and reduce a fiscal deficit that is expected to reach 7% this year, a reflection of Kirchner’s election-year spending.
Macri has said the three priorities of his administration would be “zero poverty, fighting drug traffickers and improving institutions,” a reference to Fernandez’s purported use of the judiciary and regulatory agencies to thwart opposition legislation.
Macri said he will “adjust” currency controls that have fed much of the country’s double-digit inflation. While the government maintains an official exchange rate of about 9.5 pesos to the dollar, the black market rate is currently around 14.5 pesos to the dollar.
Fernandez’s populist policies have included restricting imports, a heavy hand in farm policy and subsidies of energy and transportation prices that are popular with poor constituents. She is constitutionally barred from running for a third term.
Fernandez also expanded the country’s social safety net by augmenting elderly care, education spending and pensions. She has reduced poverty by paying out monthly stipends to families to improve their children’s school attendance and regular medical treatment.
After voting in her southern city of residence, Rio Gallegos, Fernandez described the election as “historic.” She said that Argentina has had 12 years of “economic constancy and progress” following a crisis that included a 2001 bond default and devaluation.
“The streets in peace, people working and taking vacation — we have never had a period of government with this reality of economic stability and progress,” Fernandez said.
In the final weeks of the campaign, the president’s son, Maximo, who heads kirchnerismo’s La Campora youth movement, sent out social media messages warning supporters that Macri, if elected, would discontinue the social programs expanded by his mother.
Macri responded by criticizing what he called scare tactics. “Social plans are not a gift but a right and we are not going to discontinue them,” Macri said at a campaign event last week
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10. MAURICIO MACRI WINS ARGENTINA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (Financial Times)
By Benedict Mander in Buenos Aires
November 23, 2015
Mauricio Macri, the centre-right mayor of Buenos Aires who has vowed to bring change to Argentina, won presidential elections on Sunday, marking the beginning of a new political era for South America’s second-largest economy.
“Today is a historic day. It is the change of an epoch,” Mr Macri told a crowd of jubilant supporters waving flags and balloons on Sunday night, before breaking into an energetic dance on stage. “It is here, it is now, let’s go Argentina!” he roared.
The 56-year-old son of an Italian construction magnate won 51.6 per cent of the vote, leaving Daniel Scioli, the government-backed governor of the province of Buenos Aires, on 48.3 per cent, with more than 97 per cent of the vote counted.
“People opted for a change. May God illuminate Macri so that this change is a winning one,” said Mr Scioli as he conceded defeat.
The victory for the former president of Boca Juniors, one of Argentina’s most popular football clubs, brings an end to 12 years of populist rule by the outgoing leftist president, Cristina Fernández, and her late husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, who took power in 2003 in the wake of a devastating economic crisis.
The shift to the right in Argentina comes as many leftwing leaders in Latin America, especially in Brazil and Venezuela, are suffering plunging popularity ratings and tanking economies as the resource-rich region adjusts to the end of a decade-long economic boom spurred by high commodity prices.
Mr Macri himself will inherit a complicated economic scenario, including a widening fiscal deficit, double-digit inflation and an acute scarcity of dollars thanks to Argentina’s isolation from the international capital markets since its 2001 sovereign debt default, at the time, the largest in history.
Foreign exchange reserves are running so low that the central bank ordered banks on Saturday to sell two-thirds of their dollar holdings in order to boost its foreign currency liquidity so that it can continue to support Argentina’s heavily overvalued currency. Many expect a sharp devaluation after Mr Macri becomes president on December 10. He has pledged to start removing strict capital controls on his first day of office.
A party atmosphere filled Mr Macri’s campaign headquarters, where euphoric supporters celebrated a victory that just a month ago had seemed almost out of reach. But an unexpectedly strong performance by his coalition in the first round of the presidential elections on October 25 forced the run-off vote on Sunday.
Despite the economic challenges facing Mr Macri, many Argentines celebrated a peaceful and democratic handover of power in a country that has been plagued by military coups and economic crises that have toppled numerous governments over the last century.
“At long last! We’ve been waiting formacri this moment for too long,” cried Alfonso Zamora, excitedly honking his car horn at a traffic light on a busy intersection in the upscale district of Palermo in the capital city shortly after local media first declared that Mr Macri had won. “Argentina is going to become a different country.”
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11. MAURICIO MACRI’S CHOICE FOR ARGENTINA: SHOCK TREATMENT OR GRADUAL CHANGE (Financial Times)
By John Paul Rathbone, Latin America editor
November 23, 2015
Latin America’s pink tide ebbs further with victory of Buenos Aires mayor
The election of Mauricio Macri on Sunday as Argentina’s new president marks the end of an era for the country and, indeed, for the region as a whole. The bounty that accompanied the commodity boom of the past 12 years is over; leaner times will require more prudent and orthodox economic management. That is as true of the economic populism that characterised the two administrations of Cristina Fernández, Argentina’s outgoing president, as it is of other South American countries with out-of-favour leftist governments, such as in Brazil.
There will also be less populist grandstanding of the sort that Ms Fernández is known for. The centre-right Mr Macri, the son of a wealthy businessman and currently the mayor of Buenos Aires, is certainly a business-like figure. In addition, the commodity price crash has cut down to size the popular appeal of charismatic leaders, such as Ms Fernández, who modelled herself on Evita Perón.
The failures of her populist model, and a widespread weariness with her sharp-tongued and confrontational style, saw to that. The same is true of other recent political movements in South America, such as Chavismo in Venezuela, Lulismo in Brazil and perhaps Evo Morales’ rule in Bolivia.
South America’s so-called “pink tide” is receding.
Still, Mr Macri’s electoral success last night is unusual. He promised change; indeed, his coalition is called “Let’s Change”. That promise helped propel him from a supposedly distant second in the polls just a month ago, to victory last night with 51.4 per cent of the vote. But change to what, exactly; in which areas; and, how?
The economy is the most pressing issue that Mr Macri must address. Inflation is running at double-digits, foreign reserves have collapsed, there are currency controls, the exchange rate is overvalued, the government is shut out of international markets by its long-running court case with holdout creditors, the central bank is printing money to finance the fiscal deficit and the domestic economy suffers from a web of domestic distortions — including energy subsidies that can shrink a household’s monthly energy bills to the price of a cup of coffee.
The hard call that Mr Macri must make is whether to address these macroeconomic distortions in one go — via a shock treatment package of the kind that Argentines have come to know and fear — or more gradually. Both courses have their merits, and Mr Macri’s team of well-regarded economic advisers is reportedly divided on the issue.
Certainly, Argentina will need to have recourse to multilateral financial support at some point — including, presumably, the International Monetary Fund, even though the IMF is indelibly associated in Argentine minds with the country’s calamitous 2002 debt default and devaluation. So far, Mr Macri has said only that he would start to remove capital controls immediately after his inauguration on December 10.
Mr Macri also faces considerable political challenges. He lacks a majority in Congress, although this may not present an insurmountable barrier to the passage of legislation.
In the lower house, with 257 seats, his coalition has more than 90 deputies, and he may be able to count on the support of over 30 dissident Peronists to carry a majority. Mr Macri also lacks a majority in the Senate. But senators traditionally take their lead from Argentina’s powerful state governors who in turn negotiate directly with the president. So, on important issues, such as solving the holdouts issue, Mr Macri should be able to build the support he needs. He has form here, too. As mayor of Buenos Aires, Mr Macri managed to pass laws through the local legislature even though he also lacked a majority there.
Perhaps the biggest area where Mr Macri needs to effect change, though, is in Argentina’s investment climate. Financial investors have cheered Mr Macri’s rise and Argentine stocks and bonds have rallied on the prospect of change. But this rally has been a trader’s plaything. Mr Macri’s job is to convert Argentina into a destination for real money and foreign direct investment rather than a hedge fund speculation. For now, that is only a hope as it would mark a decisive change for a country that, during the past 100 years, is unique in having lost its former “rich nation status”.
But even in Argentina, as Ms Fernández remarked ruefully on her Twitter account last night, “nothing lasts forever.”
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12. THE ULTIMATE POLITICAL GOAL (Financial Times)
By Simon Kuper
November 20, 2015
‘Macri struck me as a man of destiny: rich, intelligent, funny. But none of it could have happened without football’
One day in 2001, an Argentine football club chairman came to Oxford to explain how he planned to parlay his success with Boca Juniors into a political career. “The first thing that helps,” Mauricio Macri told our small gathering of academics and strays in his perfect business English, “is that I don’t have to invest any capital to be known. I have 98 per cent recognition.” Better, he added, Boca’s triumphs had given him a reputation for competence. He claimed that even fans of rivals River Plate often said: “The only thing we envy from Boca is the chairman.”
My record of that day in my notebook is headed “Nov. 22”. Tomorrow, exactly 14 years later, centre-right leader Macri is expected to be elected Argentine president in a runoff vote. My only surprise is that he didn’t get there sooner. In Oxford, and at a later meeting in Buenos Aires, Macri struck me as a rather obvious man of destiny: rich, intelligent, handsome, funny, and extraordinarily clear about where he was heading. But none of it could have happened without football.
In Oxford, after a lunch of soggy chops, Macri trampled on centuries of Oxfordian tradition by rigging up a laptop and a slide projector to explain his path. His Italian-born dad, Franco, was a wealthy entrepreneur with many government contracts. Macri had worked for the family company until, aged 36, he was elected Boca’s president. On the slide explaining this move, the first line read: “Independence from my father.”
It sounded like the then American president, George W Bush, who had also lived in his father’s shadow until, aged 42, he became managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball club. Bush used his new visibility to get elected governor of Texas, and took it from there. Similarly, Silvio Berlusconi glided from running AC Milan football club to running Italy.
Almost all political language is populist, but that’s particularly true in Argentina. Look at Macri’s compatriot, Pope Francis, now possibly the most popular politician on earth: an aged virgin with 1.2 billion followers, he drives a small Fiat, talks about his beloved San Lorenzo football club, and ends up looking like a regular guy.
Boca was the ideal club to equip rich daddy’s boy Macri with populist credentials. A common phrase says Boca are supported by “50 per cent plus one of all Argentines”. The club’s stadium, the Bombonera, is a stage for mass emotions. As Macri said: “We are so near the players that we generally joke and argue with them during matches. If Freud could come back to earth and go to Boca for an hour, he would say, ‘I have to revise my theories.’”
Macri seems always to have viewed the football circus with a cool outsider’s eye. In Oxford he presented himself as an unabashed manipulator of less rational beings. “The football environment is very primitive,” he told us. “The directors are very contaminated by the microclimate and by internal conflicts.” Macri’s strategy was to steer other people’s vanity and emotion. Early in his reign at Boca, he and coach Carlos Bilardo got rid of several popular players. The fans weren’t pleased, said Macri. “But fortunately we could put most of the damage on Bilardo, because he was a very big figure. He paid the cost. That was very important.” Coaches, Macri explained, function as “fuses — when you lose three matches in a row, you fire them”.
Boca under Macri experienced “its most spectacular cycle in 100 years”. Trophies piled up, and the footballers became vain prima donnas (while always remaining under their agents’ thumbs, noted Macri). Every Monday after another victory, Macri’s marketing people would put out posters mocking River fans as “chickens”. For instance, the chickens might be shown heading for the airport. Why did Boca do that? “This creates craziness,” Macri explained, and craziness sold match tickets.
I left Oxford that day thinking Macri could soon be mayor of Buenos Aires. A month later Argentina’s peso collapsed, and I thought he could be president. In April 2002 I flew to a stricken, terrified Buenos Aires to interview him in a mansion in the wealthy Palermo neighbourhood. Macri was triumphant. He said that crisis-hit Argentines had rejected the “total leadership class” — except Boca’s president. “I am seen as having done a serious and accountable job. My experience has come from the business sector. That is what I applied in the Boca Juniors period, and with results.”
By then he had begun campaigning as a politician. Voters would often ask him about Boca’s planned transfers, or launch spontaneously into the club chant, “Dale Boca!” In 2005 he was elected congressman, and in 2007 mayor of Buenos Aires. Last month, after his surprisingly good performance in the first round of the presidential elections, supporters chanted, “Argentina, Argentina!” as if in a football stadium.
The only thing Macri still lacks is his father’s approval. Franco, now 85, said recently that his son had “the brain to be president, but not the heart”. That was my impression too.
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13. ARGENTINES ELECT OPPOSITION CANDIDATE MACRI AS PRESIDENT (USA Today)
By Greg Toppo
November 22, 2015
Argentines on Sunday handed left-leaning President Cristina Fernandez a symbolic defeat by electing opposition leader Mauricio Macri in a historic runoff election.
With most of the votes counted, Macri had 53%, compared to 47% for rival Daniel Scioli, Fernandez’s close ally and chosen successor, the BBC reported. Scioli conceded defeat late Sunday, telling supporters that he had called Macri to congratulate him, The Associated Press reported.
Macri’s victory represents the first time in more than a decade that Argentina’s center-right opposition has wrested the presidency from the center-left Peronists.
Loud cheers erupted at Macri’s campaign headquarters after television exit polls suggested he had won, BBC reported.
Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, campaigned on promises to reform and jumpstart Argentina’s economy. He emerged as the front-runner in the race after an Oct. 25 first round of voting that forced a runoff against Scioli, governor of Buenos Aires province. In that round, Macri lost to Scioli, 36.7% to 34.5%. But neither candidate won outright, forcing Argentina’s first-ever runoff.
Macri promised to lead with “21st century development,” as opposed to “21st century socialism,” a term used by supporters of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro.
Macri, leader of the Cambiemos (Let’s Change) coalition, is the son of one of Argentina’s richest men.
Scioli, who had initially been expected to win by 10 or more points in last month’s six-candidate election, has said a Macri victory would subject Argentina to the market-driven policies of the 1990s, a period of deregulation that many Argentines believe set the stage for the financial meltdown of 2001-2002.
“This government has helped a lot of people with the social welfare plans,” Carlos Mercurio, a 55-year-old newsstand owner who voted for Scioli, told AP. “I’m afraid of what Macri might do.”
The election comes at a time when Argentina’s economy, Latin America’s third largest, has stalled. Inflation is around 30%, gross domestic product growth is just above zero and many private economists warn that the Fernandez administration’s spending is not sustainable.
Macri had promised to address the economic problems and to shake things up regionally. He said he would push to expel Venezuela from the South American trade bloc known as Mercosur because of the jailing of opposition leaders under Maduro. That would be a huge change for a continent where many countries, including neighbors Chile, Brazil and Bolivia, have left-leaning democratic governments that have maintained close ties with Venezuela.
Macri promised to lift unpopular controls on the buying of U.S. dollars and thus eliminate a booming black market for currency exchange. Doing that would likely lead to a sharp devaluation of the Argentine peso, AP reported.
With low foreign reserves, the government would desperately need an immediate infusion of dollars. Those could come from many different places, but ultimately would require structural changes to a largely protectionist economy, solving the debt spat and developing warmer relations with other nations, including the United States.
Election officials said 74% of registered voters, or about 24 million people, went to the polls. Voting in Argentina is obligatory, but there are exceptions for senior citizens and people who are traveling and can’t get to a polling place, among others.
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14. OPPOSITION CAPTURES ARGENTINE ELECTION, ENDING ‘KIRCHNER ERA’ (San Diego Union-Tribune)
23 November 2015
Opposition captures Argentine election, ending ‘Kirchner era’
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
Opposition candidate Mauricio Macri won Argentina’s presidential election on Sunday, marking an end to the left-leaning and often-combative era of President Cristina Fernandez, who along with her late husband dominated the country’s political scene for 12 years and rewrote its social contract.
Ruling party candidate Daniel Scioli, Fernandez’s chosen successor, conceded late Sunday and said he had called Macri to congratulate him on a victory that promises to chart Argentina on a more free-market, less state-interventionist course.
“Today is a historic day,” said Macri, addressing thousands of cheering supporters as horns were heard blaring across Buenos Aires. “It’s the changing of an era.”
With 98 percent of the vote counted, Macri had 51.45 percent support compared to 48.55 percent for Scioli.
The victory by the business-friendly Macri, who gained a national profile as president of the popular Boca Juniors soccer club, comes after he did better than expected in the first round on Oct. 25. The close first round forced a runoff with Scioli, the governor of the vast Buenos Aires province.
Macri, the outgoing mayor of Buenos Aires, hails from one of the country’s richest families. On the campaign trail, he sometimes talked about being kidnapped in the early 1990s, an experience he said helped him understand the needs of others and he credits with pushing him into politics.
As mayor of Argentina’s most important city, he was known for a technocrat manner that stressed efficiency over style.
He campaigned for president on promises to reform and jump-start the South American country’s sagging economy. He also pledged to lead by “listening more and speaking less” than Fernandez, something he frequently said on the campaign trail.
“I’m so happy,” said Julia Juarez, a 66-year-old retired teacher who was one of thousands watching the returns at Macri’s bunker. “Argentines are tired of this government. Tired of the corruption. We are ready for something new.”
Scioli, who had been expected to win by 10 or more points in last month’s six-candidate first round of voting, tried to regain momentum before Sunday’s runoff by frequently attacking Macri. He said a Macri win would subject this nation of 41 million people to the market-driven policies of the 1990s, a period of deregulation that many Argentines believe set the stage for the financial meltdown of 2001-2002.
Macri’s win signals a clear end to the era of Fernandez, who along with her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, rewrote the country’s social contract, gaining both rabid followers and fierce critics along the way. People often refer to their combined years in power as the “Kirchner era.”
The power couple spent heavily on programs for the poor, raised tariffs to protect local economies and passed several progressive laws, including the legalization of gay marriage in 2010.
The Dec. 10 change of power will come at a time when Argentina’s economy, Latin America’s third largest, has stalled. Inflation is around 30 percent, gross domestic product growth is just above zero, and many private economists warn that the Fernandez administration’s spending is not sustainable.
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15. WARNING SIGNS ON THE ROAD TO ‘CHANGE’ IN ARGENTINA (The Huffington Post)
By Mark Weisbrot
November 20, 2015
Imagine a U.S. presidential candidate who met with the Russian government and repeatedly accused them of being “too soft” on President Obama. A candidate who told Russia’s foreign minister of the “need to set limits” on the White House’s “misbehavior,” and that the Russians’ “silence” on the “abusive mistreatment it [Russia] suffered” at the hands of the Obama administration “had encouraged more of the same.”
Would Americans trust such a candidate? OK, that’s a rhetorical question. But in Argentina, it’s real.
Mauricio Macri, a right-wing businessman from one of the country’s richest families, is running for president in elections this Sunday. According to leaked documents from the U.S. Embassy, published by WikiLeaks, this is the conversation he had with the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. State Department official in charge of Latin America. He was very concerned that Washington was “too soft” on Argentina and was encouraging “abusive treatment” of the U.S. at the hands of the Argentine government.
The analogy is not perfect, since the current Russian government has never played a major role — or any role, for that matter — in wrecking the U.S. economy and creating a Great Depression here. But the U.S. Treasury Department, which was the IMF’s decider during Argentina’s severe depression of 1998-2002, did indeed exert an enormous influence on the policies that prolonged and deepened that depression. Argentines are not holding a grudge, but neither would they want the U.S. to again play a major role in their politics or economic policy.
But there are other reasons to worry about Macri’s intentions that hit closer to home. In his conversations with U.S. officials, in 2009, he referred to the economic policies of the Kirchners — Néstor Kirchner, who was president from 2003-2007, and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was elected in 2007 — as “a failed economic model.” He has made similar statements during the campaign, and although he has often been vague, he has indicated that he wants something very different, and considerably to the right of current economic policy.
It is worth looking at this much-maligned record of the Kirchners, especially since Daniel Scioli, who is the candidate of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her “Front for Victory” alliance, represents some continuity with “Kirchnerismo.” Macri’s coalition is called “Cambiemos,” or “Let’s Change.”
From 2003-2015, according to the IMF, the real (inflation-adjusted) Argentine economy grew by about 78 percent. (There is some dispute over this number, but not enough to change the overall picture.) This is quite a large increase in living standards, one of the biggest in the Americas. Unemployment fell from more than 17.2 percent to 6.9 percent (IMF). The government created the largest conditional cash transfer program in the Americas for the poor. From 2003 to the second half of 2013 (the latest independent statistics available), poverty fell by about 70 percent and extreme poverty by 80 percent. (These numbers are based on independent estimates of inflation.)
But these numbers do not describe the full magnitude of the achievement. As I describe in my book, Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015), Néstor Kirchner took office as the economy was beginning to recover from a serious depression, and it took great courage and tenacity to stand up to the IMF and its allies, negotiate a sustainable level of foreign debt (which involved sticking to a large default), and implement a set of macroeconomic policies that would allow for this remarkable recovery. It was analogous to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leadership during the U.S. Great Depression, and like Roosevelt, Kirchner had the majority of the economics profession against him — as well as the media. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also had to fight a number of battles to continue Argentina’s economic progress.
In the last four years, growth has slowed, inflation has been higher, and a black market has developed for the dollar. Some of this has been due to a number of unfavorable external shocks: the regional economy will have negative growth this year (Argentina’s will be slightly positive); Argentina’s biggest trading partner, Brazil, is in recession and has seen its currency plummet; and in 2014 a New York judge of questionable competence made a political decision to block Argentina from making debt payments to most of its creditors. So, despite the overall track record of 12 years of Kirchnerismo delivering a large increase in living standards and employment, and successful poverty reduction, there are significant problems that need to be fixed.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president of the United States in the midst of a recession and inflation passing 13 percent. He, too, promised change and he delivered it — and ushered in an era of sharply increased inequality and other social, political, and economic maladies from which America is still suffering. Just look at his proud progeny in the Republican presidential debates.
Macri probably does not have Reagan’s talent as an actor and communicator to radically transform Argentina and reverse most of the gains of the last 13 years. But it seems likely from the interests that he represents, and his political orientation, that Argentina’s poor and working people will bear the brunt of any economic adjustment. And there is a serious risk that by following right-wing “fixes” for the economy, he could launch a cycle of self-defeating austerity and recession of the kind that we have seen in Greece and the eurozone.
The Kirchners also reversed the impunity of military officers responsible for mass murder and torture during the dictatorship, and hundreds have been tried and convicted for their crimes. Macri has dismissed these unprecedented human rights achievements as mere political showmanship. His party also voted against marriage equality, which was passed anyway, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage.
“Let’s Change” is an appealing slogan, but the question is “change to what?”
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of the new book “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy
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16. MACRI TOPPLES ARGENTINA’S PERONISTS, TOUGH REFORMS AHEAD (Reuters News)
By Richard Lough
Nov 23, 2015
Conservative challenger Mauricio Macri turned Argentine politics on its head on Sunday, kicking the ruling Peronist movement out of power with a promise to liberalize the ailing economy and end a culture of divisive politics.
Macri, the son of an Italian-born construction magnate, won the election by tapping into frustration over anemic growth, high inflation and corruption, and will become only the third non-Peronist leader since the end of military rule in 1983.
The other two failed to finish their terms, however, a reminder of the difficulties that Peronist labor unions, state governors and opponents in Congress could cause Macri if he is unable to get the economy growing quickly.
After an unpredictable campaign that pitted poorer Argentines grateful for generous welfare programs against others exasperated with state shackles on the economy, Macri will need to deliver on pro-business reforms without hurting the poor.
“We’ve been saying from Tierra del Fuego in the south to Jujuy in the north that we have to build an Argentina with zero poverty, and that’s what we’re going to do together,” Macri told his jubilant supporters on Sunday night.
Argentine sovereign debt rose on Monday on news of his election, with the 2033 dollar discount bond hitting its highest level since April 2007 US040114GL81=R. While Argentina’s stock market was not yet open for business, the Frankfurt-listed American Depository Receipt of Argentina’s Grupo Financiero Galicia (GGALyb.F) jumped 6.28 percent.
Macri defeated leftist ruling party candidate Daniel Scioli as voters punished outgoing President Cristina Fernandez for her handling of the economy and her abrasive style of leadership.
The 56 year old faces a number of economic challenges. Slow growth is driven by unsustainable spending, inflation is at well above 20 percent and capital controls have backfired to leave foreign reserves at nine-year lows.
The country is also mired in a messy debt default that is blocking access to global credit markets.
Macri, who served two terms as mayor of Buenos Aires, has promised to dismantle a web of currency controls and trade restrictions that have deterred investors and hobbled growth.
Policy changes such as eliminating hefty taxes on grains exports and revamping economic data long viewed as manipulated by Fernandez’s government will be quick hits to underscore his intent to bring change.
But elsewhere he will have to move carefully.
Removing capital controls that have curbed access to dollars and unifying a multi-tiered exchange rate may lead to a sharp devaluation which, while needed to restore trade competitiveness, will likely feed into consumer prices.
In the final stages of campaigning, Macri indicated he favored a more staggered lifting of currency curbs.
“We cannot solve all the problems that this government is leaving behind on the first day,” Macri said ahead of the run-off vote on Sunday.
He is expected to scale back energy and transport subsidies in his first year in order to narrow a yawning fiscal deficit.
Economists estimate about 20 percent of government spending is on subsidies, but weaning Argentines off cheap power and transport may prove unpopular.
HARD TRANSITION AHEAD
“The transition from failed country to global power is likely to be both bumpy and slow,” said Roberto Lampl, Head of Latin American Investments at Alquity Investment Management. “Macri will have to undo twelve years of damage but looks set to prioritize the economy and growth.”
“Today there is an optimism in Buenos Aires which hasn’t been seen for over a decade, change has finally come to Argentina.”
Scioli, a moderate Peronist, had the support of Fernandez loyalists but he failed to convince others he would restore investor confidence at a time when Argentina seeks to exploit vast shale oil and gas reserves.
Even so, his warnings that Macri’s pro-market policies will put the interests of big business ahead of workers, erode salaries and destroy pensions have laid down possible battle lines between Macri and his opponents over the next four years.
“If Macri devalues then people could go out into the streets and protest,” said Scioli voter Ana Marchessi, a 56-year-old lawyer.
Macri’s margin of victory was less than 3 percentage points and his challenge will be to show an economic recovery is taking root by late 2016 or he could face a hammering in a mid-term Congressional elections the following year.
The past two non-Peronist leaders since democracy was restored in 1983 failed to complete their terms.
Both were from the Radical Party. Raul Alfonsin stepped down six months early in 1989 as hyper-inflation raged, and Fernando de la Rua fled the presidential palace in a helicopter during the 2001-02 depression.
Lacking a majority in Congress, Macri is likely to move quickly with his reform agenda during an expected early honeymoon period and try to draw on cross-party support.
He is expected to court the backing of lawmakers loyal to centrist Sergio Massa, who placed third in the first round of the presidential election last month, and other smaller parties to outmaneuver Fernandez hardliners.
Control over discretionary transfers that boost provincial budgets, meanwhile, will give Macri leverage over governors and in turn their senators in the upper house.
His “Let’s Change” alliance will control Argentina’s three main bases of power: the federal government, the populous Buenos Aires province that traditionally was a Peronist stronghold, and the capital city.
“This is a huge shift for Argentine politics,” said Juan Cruz Diaz, head of the Cefeidas Group.
“For years the opposition, controlled by an unsuccessful Radical Party, claimed it was impossible to govern with Peronism in opposition. Macri has a big opportunity to prove that wrong”.
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17. ARGENTINA IN FOR A RADICAL POST-ELECTION GRAINS OUTPUT INCREASE (Reuters News)
By Hugh Bronstein
23 November 2015
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – By the end of President-elect Mauricio Macri’s first four-year term, Argentina will have doubled wheat shipments and surpassed Russia and Brazil as a corn exporter, by some estimates, as the abandonment of years-long trade restraints unleashes the full potential of the country’s vast Pampas farm belt.
Opposition leader Macri beat ruling party candidate Daniel Scioli in Sunday’s election, effectively ending the eight-year, production-sapping feud between farmers and outgoing President Cristina Fernandez, who clamped down on shipments of food-related grains in a bid to damp double-digit inflation.
Macri, who won the backing of the farm lobby with a broad free-market platform, has promised to eliminate corn and wheat export taxes and ditch the quota system that controls international shipments of both crops. He also wants a more competitive exchange rate.
As a result, farmers are likely to begin alternating more often between soybeans and the other crops, not only boosting corn and wheat output, but nourishing the soil as well, aiding soybean yields in the process.
Soy currently grows on 62 percent of Argentina’s cropland compared with about 25 percent in the United States, according to local analyst estimates.
“I planted only about a third of the wheat and corn that I would have liked to this year,” said Santiago del Solar, who manages thousands of hectares in the bread basket province of Buenos Aires. “And this has happened for the last eight years.” He said improved soil thanks to better rotation should allow for soybean output to rise along with that of other crops. Corn and wheat leave mulch behind, which combats erosion.
“We can lower the risk of erosion to almost zero if we rotate crops the way we want to,” del Solar said.
Corn will see the fastest planting area growth next season thanks to a projected improvement in profitability under Macri’s policies, said agronomist Pablo Adreani, who has analyzed Argentina’s grains sector for more than three decades.
He expects farmers will increase their corn acreage from 3 million hectares this season to 4 million in the 2016/17 crop year. Argentina’s corn exports could surge by 44 percent over the next three years to 23 million tonnes, which would make it the world’s biggest supplier after the United States.
Wheat exports may rise from 4.3 million tonnes this season to 11 million by 2018/19, which would be equivalent to about 6.8 percent of global wheat trade, Adreani said.
Even shipments of soy and its derivatives should rise from 45 million tonnes to 52 million in 2018/19, he says.
Argentine farmers and officials across the political spectrum have whole-heartedly embraced genetically modified soy technology, despite controversy over possible health effects.
Modified seeds have contributed to the explosion of soy production on the Pampas over the last two decades and are expected to remain popular with growers well into the future.
IMMEDIATE ABOLITION
Under Fernandez, who is barred by law from seeking a third consecutive term, the country collects a 23 percent export tax on wheat and a 20 percent levy on corn shipments. Exports of soybeans, of which Argentina is the world’s third-largest supplier, are taxed at 35 percent, a levy Macri vows to cut by 5 percentage points per year starting sometime in 2016. In a bid to ensure ample domestic food supplies and keep prices low, Fernandez established a moving export quota system on wheat and corn, which growers say cuts competition among buyers and generates oversupply of the local market. Macri says he will ditch the quota system immediately after his Dec. 10 inauguration. The term is four years with the possibility of one immediate re-election. Macri’s farm policy team sees a 30 percent rise in Argentine grain and oilseed output to 130 million tonnes by the end of his first term in 2019. “The changes could reposition Argentina as a corn producer, with an exportable surplus second only to the United States, as opposed to now, as fourth behind the United States, Brazil and Russia,” said Gustavo Lopez, head of consultancy Agritrend. Factoring in Macri’s policy platform, Lopez said Argentine corn production is set to rise 57 percent to 33.7 million tonnes by the 2024/25 crop year from 27 million in 2013/14. He projects wheat production to leap 54 percent to 18.3 million tonnes from 9.5 million during the same period, and soy to soar 63 percent higher to 72 million tonnes. A WEAKER PESO
Whether the world will crave those increased supplies is another question. International prices are down as grains reserves climb.
Global corn, soybean and wheat ending stocks are projected by the USDA to be the largest ever by the end of the 2015/16 season, following record or near-record crops in the U.S. and South America.
But Argentina’s farmers may be better placed to compete next year thanks to Macri’s pledge to allow the overvalued peso to devalue.
Just as the strong U.S. dollar has made doing business more expensive for U.S. farmers, a cheaper peso would help their Argentine counterparts. “Competitiveness will be restored over the medium- and long- term with the modification of the exchange rate,” said Ernesto Ambrosetti, economist with the Argentine Rural Society (SRA), which represents the country’s biggest farms. He said SRA members are counting on Macri to not only reduce export taxes and ditch the quota system, but to help the sector by reducing Argentina’s double-digit inflation rate and eliminate crop transport bottlenecks by improving highways and paving rural roads that wash out when it rains. “Corn and wheat will start occupying a bigger area,” Ambrosetti said. “That rotation will set the stage for sustainable productivity.”
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18. ARGENTINA ELECTIONS: MAURICIO MACRI POISED TO BE NEXT PRESIDENT (CNN)
By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Sun November 22, 2015
(CNN)—Opposition candidate Mauricio Macri is poised to become Argentina’s next President after a runoff vote that marks the end of a political dynasty.
“Thank you for believing in me. … I am here because you have decided,” a triumphant Macri said from his campaign headquarters Sunday night as throngs of supporters erupted in cheers.
“Today is a historic day,” he said, “a new era.”
Macri spoke shortly after Daniel Scioli, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s hand-picked successor, conceded defeat.
With more than 98% of votes counted, Macri of the Let’s Change coalition had won 51.4% of votes, while Scioli had garnered nearly 48.6%, elections officials said.
Closely watched vote
For Fernandez, who’s slated to leave office in December after eight years at the helm, Sunday’s closely watched vote was a test of whether her populist political legacy would endure.
For a region where leftist movements have played a growing role, it’s an election that could shift the balance of power.
And for the finance world, it’s a long-awaited moment that could change how the South American country handles its debt problems and interacts with Wall Street.
The election of Macri, a center-right candidate who’s mayor of Buenos Aires and the former president of the Boca Juniors football club, could signal a conservative shift for Argentina. Macri has said he wants to rewrite the playbook on Argentina’s economy — a campaign promise that made him popular on Wall Street and drew sharp criticism from his opponents.
In his victory speech Sunday night, Macri promised he’d work to eliminate poverty in Argentina and change the way business is done.
“I also want to say to our Latin American brothers and our brothers around the world, that we want to have good relationships with all countries,” he said. “We want to work with everyone. We know that the Argentine people have much to bring to the world, and we hope to find an agenda of cooperation.”
Scioli:
As she tried to convince voters to support Scioli, Fernandez noted her family’s legacy, referring to her two terms as President and the four years her husband, the late Nestor Kirchner, served as Argentina’s leader.
“We have never had a period of government of 12 and a half years with this social and economic stability and of constant progress,” she said.
And Scioli, who many had been expecting to sail to an election victory during the first round of voting in October, launched attack ads against Macri in the days leading up to the runoff and invoked the name of Pope Francis as he encouraged voters to head to the polls Sunday.
Their efforts to drum up a surge in support weren’t enough to give Scioli the victory he was seeking.
In a somber speech from his campaign headquarters as votes were still being counted Sunday night, Scioli acknowledged that the margin between him and his opponent was too large to overcome. But he vowed to keep pushing for the ideals Fernandez and her husband espoused.
“I have given the best in me, with passion, as I usually do, convinced that our proposal to the Argentine people was the best option. The people, in this runoff, have chosen differently,” he said. “Now I, from wherever it may be, will still defend an ideal, a country project that started 12 years ago.”
The state-run Telam news agency reported late Sunday that Fernandez had congratulated Macri for his election win and planned to meet with the president-elect Tuesday.
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19. WHY WALL STREET CARES A LOT ABOUT ARGENTINA’S ELECTIONS (CNN Wire)
By Patrick Gillespie
22 November 2015
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wall Street hedge funds have been waiting years for this day.
Argentina elected a new president Sunday. The change in government could finally end a decade-long battle between the hedge funds and Argentina over huge debt payments.
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor, have governed the country for 12 years. They’ve refused to pay the hedge funds the entire time.
That fight was a major issue heading into Sunday’s elections.
Both candidates, Mauricio Macri and Daniel Scioli, suggested they would resolve the debt problems with the hedge funds.
Late Sunday night, Scioli conceded defeat after early results placed Macri in the lead.
The two candidates offered different solutions to the debt crisis. Scioli said he would have maintained some of Kirchner’s policies, while Macri vowed to rewrite the playbook on Argentina’s economy.
But settling with the holdouts, along with implementing new reforms, will likely hurt Argentina’s economy in the short term, expert say.
“Argentina appears to be at a crossroads,” says Win Thin, head of emerging markets currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman. “After years of economic mismanagement, the people could finally vote for a change of government but the economic adjustment will be painful.”
The unresolved debt debacle has shut out Argentina from much of the global economy while it has suffered from massive inflation, declining cash reserves and meager economic growth.
Wall Street was rooting for Macri to win. He has promised major economic reforms and appears most likely to settle with the holdouts.
Macri was in second place during the first round of voting in October, behind Scioli. But the results, which surprised many, were too close in the first round, prompting Argentina’s first ever runoff election. And after the October election, Macri gained favor in the polls.
Argentina’s record-breaking default and the ‘vultures’
The hedge funds, led by the billionaire Paul Singer, want about $1.5 billion from Argentina.
Argentina broke the record books when it defaulted on $95 billion of debt in 2001.</