MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Argentine stocks and the Peso strengthen following Sunday primary results
Cristina Fernandez was expected to win by several percentage points, according to final polls last week, causing investors to fear her strong political comeback 
But no matter how many seats Macri's coalition picks up in October, he will still lack a majority and must build alliances to pass reforms. 
Argentina's Peso weakened almost 10% since Cristina Fernandez broke with more moderate factions of Peronism movement and declared her candidacy on June 24. Argentine stocks rose, the peso strengthened more than 3% and credit default swaps fell on Monday after the mid-term legislative primary election was seen as favoring business-friendly President Mauricio Macri's reform effort.
With 95.68% of polling stations counted in crucial Buenos Aires province, Macri's favored candidate, Esteban Bullrich, had 34.19% of votes for a Senate seat, versus 34.11% for former populist leader Cristina Fernandez.
Fernandez had been expected to win by several percentage points, according to the final polls last week, causing investors to fear a comeback in Congress could pave the way to her running for president in 2019 and ending Macri's reform agenda.
No matter how many seats Macri's “Let's Change” coalition picks up in October - when Argentines elect one-third of the Senate and half the lower house of Congress - Macri will still lack a majority and must build alliances to pass reforms. However, analysts said less support for Cristina Fernandez would strengthen his negotiating position.
“The government is still in a coalition and requires the support of other parties,” James McCormack, global head of Sovereign and Supranational Ratings at Fitch said. “That won't be changing, but maybe it gives that coalition a little more impetus.”
JPMorgan's Argentina bond index showed yields tightening 27 basis points. Five-year credit default swaps fell 18 basis points to a nearly seven-week low and the Merval stock index rose 3%.
Argentina's peso had weakened around 9% as of Friday afternoon since Cristina Fernandez broke with more moderate factions of the Peronism movement and declared her candidacy on June 24.
“'Let's Change' has a favorable result on a national level, always 35 to 36%, a successful minority and facing a divided opposition,” said political analyst Ricardo Rouvier.
Fernandez was president from 2007 to 2015 and was indicted for corruption last year.
Under Argentina's election system, the winning party in each Senate race gets two of the province's three seats, with the remaining seat going to the second-place finisher.
A second-place finish would still grant Fernandez, 64, a seat, which would give her immunity from arrest, though not from trial. She dismisses the corruption accusations as politically motivated.
Most political analysts agree that previous primary experiences in Argentina show that the winning party or alliance usually manages to advance a few points further in the following midterm elections, this time scheduled for 22 October.
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Read all commentsReekie from another thread:
Aug 16th, 2017 - 06:10 pm +1““The country’s overseas bonds are among the worst performers in emerging markets over the past three weeks, the peso keeps hitting record lows ...That's Macrism at work.”
You have cause and effect mixed up.
These new results confirm that it was a blip caused by CFK announcing her candidacy and appearing to have more support than proved to be the case. So, now that she's lost relevance, the economy can return to the positive track that Macri initiated. That is Macrism at work. CFK tried to a spanner into the works but the population pulled it out and threw it away.
You must be really upset at this reversal of the negative trend that CFK initiated.
Reekie,
Aug 17th, 2017 - 04:26 am +1You have failed to address the story or my comment that the 3 week blip in Argentina's economy had absolutely nothing to do with Macri, but the adverse effects of CFK's candidacy.
“The Macrist candidate in Buenos Aires province Esteban Bullrich has grudgingly acknowledged he may lose to Cristina Fernandez.”
Maybe so, but not by the 3-4% that was predicted earlier. If she wins it will be very close. You are forgetting or denying the fact that almost all of the votes have now been counted.
About those uncounted ballots, once again, Kamerad/Komrade Rique, lies through his teeth. The government did not stop the counting. But the tallies of over 1500+ ballot boxes could not be recorded (by the Judiciary,) because of the handling of the boxes, ie the tallies being sealed in the box incorrectly instead being kept separate and accessible, or, more to the point, the tallies having more votes cast than than legal voters listed for the neighborhood.( I have read that one discrepancy was by 619 votes!) All of these boxes now have to be gone through ,counted manually, and the ballots examined for legitimacy. Now far be it from me to say that Kamerad/Komrade Rique is telling the truth, since he is the “José Goebbels” of the Narcokleptocracy here at MercoPress, but let's take him at his word for the sake of argument and agree that the withheld boxes all come from the areas that were under Kirchner's political control,(ones with high levels of violent and narco crime.) What are we to make of this? That the Kirchner machine has tried to pad the numbers with electoral fraud? That she, and Kamerad/Komrade Rique, are anxious that the purported numbers be accepted without scrutiny? I think it's pretty obvious...
Aug 17th, 2017 - 11:19 am +1http://www.thebubble.com/who-really-won-last-nights-primaries-fact-we-have-no-idea/
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