Argentina’s former conservative president and ally of Jair Bolsonaro, Mauricio Macri, announced Sunday that he would not run as an opposition candidate for president in the general elections to be held on October 22 this year.
The decision came at a time when several leaders of his party, Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change), had asked Macri to head the main ticket of the opposition coalition. Everything seems to indicate that the opposition candidate will be in the hands of Patricia Bullrich, Gerardo Morales, or Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
“I want to ratify the decision that I will not be a candidate in the next election, and I do it convinced that it is necessary to enlarge the political space of the change we started”, he has made known in a video published in his social networks.
“I have the conviction that this dark time has already begun to end, I feel it in my heart, and I trust in the decision of the Argentines to leave it behind forever”, he added in his appearance, reported by the newspaper ‘Clarín’.
It should be recalled that the electoral campaign for the Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primary Elections (PASO) will start on June 24, the deadline for submitting the definitive lists of pre-candidates for each party for the voting on August 13.
On August 23, the National Electoral Boards will be constituted, while September 2 will be the last day to present the definitive lists for the presidential election, the date on which the electoral campaign will begin.