Argentina’s Legislative elections: Peronism receives historic defeat as opposition wins big throughout country

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The ruling party Frente de Todos was defeated in the legislative elections and will no longer have a majority in the Upper House. This political circumstance weakens the government when it seeks parliamentary support to the eventual agreement it may close with the International Monetary Fund.

The government was defeated from north to south in 15 provinces and gave up its quorum in the Senate after being defeated in six of the eight districts where its seats were at stake.

Faced with the overwhelming electoral results, Alberto Fernández Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner reacted in different ways.

The president accepted his political weakness and asked the opposition to negotiate an institutional pact. At the same time, the vice president retreated to her apartment on Juncal Avenue and affirmed that she did not want to take a photo of her defeat after the operation a few days ago.

Buenos Aires was in the hands of the opposition Juntos por el Cambio party (Together for Change), which won seven of the eight provincial sections.

The Frente de Todos won in the third electoral section. They narrowed the gap in the first electoral section, showing the strength of its party apparatus, which was lubricated by the economic and social benefits of the “Plan Platita”, which is the increase in spending in social plans, an intensification of food-related spending, a higher rate of execution of some specific works and significant discretionary transfers to the provinces.

The official triumph in the suburbs implies a maze of difficult exits. When the Casa Rosada dissolves its agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the funds allocated to Plan Platita and its positive political results become a melancholy anecdote in Buenos Aires.

Governor Axel Kicillof, Máximo Kirchner, and Sergio Massa, undisputed leaders of the provincial Peronism, appealed to the administration of María Eugenia Vidal and the Government of Mauricio Macri to question the opposition candidate Diego Santilli and strengthen the candidacy of Victoria Tolosa Paz.

However, the governor’s strategy was of little use. Santilli defeated Tolosa Paz and is already preparing his strategy to fulfill his vocation of power. The elected deputy with a Peronist past wants to compete with Kicillof, who still dreams of being reelected as provincial governor.

Together with the loss of Tolosa Paz to Santilli, there were the defeats in Chubut, Corrientes, Córdoba, Mendoza, Santa Fe, and La Pampa, provinces where seats in the Senate belonging to Frente de Todos were at stake. Only in Tucumán and Catamarca did the ruling party keep its representation in the Upper House intact.

The numbers are unappealable: the Peronist senators’ bloc will go from 41 to 35 members out of 72, a political debacle that allows explaining Kirchner’s absence when facing the electoral defeat before the public opinion.

With this result, the ruling party will no longer have a Sente majority. It will be forced to negotiate with the provincial parties of Río Negro or Neuquén if there is no institutional agreement with Juntos por el Cambio.

In the 38 years of democracy, Peronism had never lost its hegemony in the Upper House.

The defeat of the ruling party in Buenos Aires and 14 other provinces implies a turning point for the internal logic of the government, which controlled the Senate and could pass laws in the Chamber of Deputies with an appropriate mix of its funds and political negotiation at the witching hour.