Midterms in midyear

G

iven the total inability of the protagonists in Buenos Aires Province to get their act together, the midterms still four months away are looking more like candidates for “It’s the economy, stupid” than ever. A sphere where the libertarian administration would seem to be playing to its strengths with a vengeance after the 5.8 percent growth rate posted last Monday for the first quarter on top of the most recent monthly inflation figure being 1.5 percent. The next day brought less welcome news with Argentina left out in the cold in a sense beyond this week’s polar temperatures when Morgan Stanley persisted in assigning it a “standalone” category outside the radar of global markets despite all Javier Milei’s transformations – not even a “frontier market” despite being a G20 economy.

Good news and bad news, one might conclude, but the good is more ambiguous than the bad, especially in electoral terms. The fact that the core sectors of manufacturing industry and agriculture grew below the 5.8 percent average is not necessarily bad news for the government since the tertiary services sector concentrates almost three-quarters of the workforce. But more than one market study is showing the distribution of the wealth to be highly uneven as reflected in consumer patterns with consumer durables and tourism abroad on the rise while food and beverages languish – perhaps the logical consequence of a monetary policy leaving the rich buying with cheap dollars while the poor are stuck with dwindling pesos. This monetary policy sustains the electoral trump card of stunted inflation but doubts linger as to other benefits – it also leaves almost half the population struggling to reach the end of the month while the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission now in town looks askance at the negative net Central Bank reserves which are also a consequence, adding to the doubts of Morgan Stanley. 

Nothing either lost or won by an economy which is not as immune from global impact as its “standalone” category might imply but this column’s brief is a more direct coverage of the campaign – not helped by the gridlock in Buenos Aires Province on which most eyes are fixed but the provinces of Formosa and Santa Fe are voting tomorrow so they will be the main focus. The situation in Buenos Aires Province has remained stuck for weeks – both the ruling Peronists and the opposition parties to the right of them believe in “United we stand, divided we fall” but are unable to translate that into any solid unity. The Peronists are divided between the followers of Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof and the Partido Justicialista chair, former two-term president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (now under house arrest for corruption), with the camp of 2023 presidential candidate Sergio Massa leaning towards the latter – unable to agree on anything beyond the indefinite re-election of their provincial legislators. On the other side of the fence, La Libertad Avanza (buoyed by last month’s triumph in this city) is uncompromising in its approach to an alliance but the 14 PRO mayors and, even more, the 20 Radical mayors feel they deserve more respect. If needs must, either side is capable of rallying together if the other does but somebody has to blink or move first.

In Formosa everybody seems resigned to eight-term Peronist Governor Gildo Insfrán calling the shots as the province’s biggest employer in tomorrow’s election to pick 15 deputies for the 30-seat provincial legislature along with municipal authorities and 30 delegates for a constituent assembly. The electoral system is the “ley de lemas” method of combined primary-election voting – this has been one key to Insfrán’s power by running an infinite number of “collector lists” under his PJ umbrella and will result tomorrow in 1,839 names being on the ballots.

As a result of this system only four groupings will be in contention tomorrow (less than other provincial elections) but housing 88 different lists. Insfrán’s Justicialist Party will have the lion’s share of these (56) while Confederación Frente Amplio Formoseño (a centre-right five-party coalition spearheaded by the former Juntos por el Cambio partners PRO and the Radicals) will have a dozen, Confluencia Ciudadana (a centre-left combo including the socialists but nothing further to the left) seven and La Libertad Avanza three. The latter (divided between Las Fuerzas del Cielo and Despertando Leones) do not include the province’s libertarian senator Francisco Paoltroni, expelled from La Libertad Avanza for opposing the Supreme Court nomination of Ariel Lijo due to his court rulings favouring Insfrán – Paoltroni is running on a separate list for the constituent assembly. 

The current Chamber of Deputies consists of 22 Justicialist legislators, seven enrolled in the Frente Amplio Formoseño and one representing the Libertad, Trabajo y Progreso party (a member of Confluencia Ciudadana).

Santa Fe is a heavyweight province, Argentina’s third-most populous with around six times the population of Formosa, but the voting here will be at a lower municipal level, including 11 mayors. In general, this column is not descending to that level of detail in other provinces but Rosario has over twice the population of Formosa. Quite apart from this quantitative aspect, Rosario is also an early bellwether because it fields two strong candidates on either side – the television journalist Juan Pedro Aleart (perhaps closer to Security Minister Patricia Bullrich than anybody in the “iron triangle”) for La Libertad Avanza as the candidate with the most votes in the April 13 PASO primaries versus the Peronist Juan Monteverde, a former associate of Juan Grabois who comes across as a more authentic and credible voice for the many dispossessed than others in the Kirchnerism saddled with the corruption now encapsulated by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s house arrest.

If there are interesting results in other Santa Fe municipal races tomorrow, we will be looking at them in next weekend’s column but certainly at Rosario.