'I'm not going anywhere,' declares Vidal in closing rally

Governor of Buenos Aires Province María Eugenia Vidal held the final rally of her campaign for re-election on Thursday evening, three days before the October 27 vote. 

While Mauricio Macri prepared to take the stage to close his own electoral campaign with a massive rally in Córdoba, fellow Juntos por el Cambio hopeful Vidal held her final rally Thursday in Vicente López, a neighbourhood in the north of the Greater Buenos Aires area, at the Platense football club stadium.

“I am not going to move a centimetre from here ...I am going to continue to be here, because this path has just begun, it is not ending here,” she said to her supporters. 

The PASO primary results of August saw Vidal losing by 17 points to her Peronist rival, Frente de Todos candidate Axel Kicillof.

'Celebration of democracy'

The 46-year-old recognised that “the last two years haven’t been easy” but insisted to “those who are still angry or disillusioned, that we listen, we understand and we are ready to improve, not backward but forward.”

She continued, claiming the election for the nation's most-populous province would be determined “by a vote, every vote counts." 

"We need all of you, we need everyone to go vote, like in ‘83,” she said, referring to the year of the first democratic elections in Argentina following the last civil-military dictatorship.

“[We need] for everyone to be there, for you to bring your grandparents, your parents. We need it to be a celebration of democracy,” she emphasised.

Vidal took time to stress the actions and accomplishments of her gubernatorial administration and stressed: “If we did all of this together in the last four years, how can we not improve? If we were the government of [public] works, how can we not be the government of work, of growth, of production?”

“I never won the election [in 2015], you won it,” she said, addressing her supporters. “The change is you, it comes from you.”

Fighting predictions

Vidal was the first-ever woman elected as governor of Buenos Aires Province and the first non-Peronist politician since 1987 to hold the position.

At one point during her speech, a rosary was thrown onstage, which Vidal picked up and entwined between her fingers while holding the microphone.

Joining her on stage were fellow Juntos por el Cambio politicians, including candidates for mayor in the province, national lawmakers, and provincial government officials, including President Mauricio Macri's cousin, Vicente López Mayor Jorge Macri. 

The governor was also accompanied on stage by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the head of government of the city of Buenos Aires, Diego Santilli, the deputy chief of government of the city, and Carolina Stanley, the minister of Social Development. Vidal called on the rally’s attendees to vote for Macri for the presidency and Juntos por el Cambio for the province. 

“Let’s turn around this election,” she said, in reference to her party’s poor performance in the primaries, stood on a stage that had a walkway deep into the crowd. “You have never abandoned me, and I am not going to abandon you. Thank you,” she finished and blew a kiss to the crowd, who responded with chants of the party slogan “Sí, se puede,” (“Yes, we can”).

– NA