After electoral victory, Argentine president promises “most austere policies”
By
Andrea Lobo
25 October 2017
In Sunday’s midterm elections in Argentina, the conservative ruling coalition Cambiemos of President Mauricio Macri received 40 percent of votes nationally and came in first in the five most populous voting districts.
Having a long list of reactionary measures waiting only for the election to be over, Macri immediately promised “the most austere politics possible” and imposed a 10 percent gasoline price-hike on Monday as part of an over-all policy of creating more profitable conditions for foreign investors.
In response to the electoral results, the Argentine financial markets rose to record levels, along with a 1.8 percent jump in Argentine dollar bonds.
This year’s round of elections involved races for two-thirds of the seats in the senate along with half of those in the chamber of deputies, with all 24 voting districts electing members in one or both congressional chambers. Macri’s Cambiemos (Let’s Change) party obtained the first place in 14 districts—three more than in the August primaries.
Far from being a “vote of confidence” in Macri, the results express a deep resentment against the twelve-year Peronist rule that began the austerity drive, price hikes and job cuts now being accelerated under Macri.
On Sunday morning, police raided an office of the Socialist Workers’ Party (PTS) in Mar del Plata, the second largest city in the province of Buenos Aires. The PTS, the leading party in the Left and Workers’ Front (FIT), had six of it members, including two candidates, arrested and detained until later in the day on trumped-up charges of violating a mandatory suspension of campaigning in advance of the vote. This cowardly police-state act…