The ruling Cambiemos coalition spent three times more on its election campaign in Buenos Aires province than its closest rival, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's Unidad Ciudadana, reports delivered to the provincial electoral court revealed yesterday.
In Argentina’s “mother of all battles” over two key national Senate spots and a bounty of Lower House seats, Cambiemos spent $69,399,860 pesos while the Unidad Ciudadana spent $23,388,743 pesos, the reports revealed.
Cambiemos won the race, sending Esteban Bullrich and Gladys González to the Senate, and Graciela Ocaña’s ticket to the Lower House.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, embroiled in corruption scandals and internal unease about her leadership, lost her third consecutive election on a tight margin that gave her the third and final senate ticket for the province in Argentina’s national Congress.
Her party was not eligible for campaign financing from the state because it was not registered as a party prior to 2015.
Some things don’t change
Cambiemos has long positioned itself as a political movement determined to restore Argentina’s institutions, which it claim were grossly harmed by former president Fernández de Kirchner’s populist left-wing government.
However, the party has not eased off government-funded advertising which often boast - in Mauricio Macri’s PRO party’s yellow and with that party’s same fonts — of new public works initiatives.
Among other trends, Buenos Aires Governor Mauría Eugenia Vidal’s voice can often be heard on the loud speaker at stations on Buenos Aires City’s underground network, the subte.
During the October elections, former Cambiemos ally and a Congressional candidate for Buenos Aires City Martín Lousteau complained that Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta was spending up to 4 million pesos per day of a public money on publicity.
-TIMES
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