The people of Argentina have handed a decisive victory to Alberto Fernandez in the country’s presidential election held on the 27th of October.
Fernandez earned 48 per cent of the votes, comfortably sailing to victory and beating incumbent President Mauricio Macri who received only 40 per cent of the votes.
According to Argentina’s electoral procedure, a candidate can win the presidency in the first round if they receive up to 45 per cent of the vote or 40 per cent of the vote with a 10 per cent lead ahead of the second-place candidate. If no candidate meets this threshold, the two top candidates will face each other in a run-off.
Fernandez’s victory was largely expected given his outing in the August primary election, which is considered to be a dry-run to the main election. Although, the nearly eight percentage point margin between him and Macri was lower than the 15-point difference recorded in the August primaries.
A comeback for the old politics
Fernandez’s running mate is former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was president from 2007-2015 and is seen as a divisive figure. According to The Guardian: “By the time she left office she was entangled in a string of court cases involving accusations of bribery, money laundering, corruption and allegations that she had helped cover up Iran’s involvement in a terrorist bombing that prosecutor was investigating. Some of the corruption cases are continuing. She denies any wrongdoing.”
Fernandez and Fernández de Kirchner are also Peronists, subscribing to a movement describedby Luisa Rollenhagen of The Nation as “a populist movement that has shaped itself to accommodate the ideologies and agendas of whoever was in power. Typically, it includes a heavy dose of populism and extreme nationalism, eschewing political pluralism in favour of a dominant ruling party.”
The election was held amid an economic crisis with a third of Argentines living in poverty. Fernandez hopes to turn the country’s economic woes around, although some fear that Argentina could return to the populist policies that helped push the country to its current state.
