MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Super May”: Eight Kirchnerite provinces advance local elections to avoid October debacle

All eight elections will be held in the first two Sundays of May, some with electronic votes, others with the more traditional envelope ballots.

With the Argentine government of Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in total disarray, the economy in shambles and with no hard currency, while a top delegation travels the world, China, Brazil, the US, and the IMF begging for fresh funds, several Argentine provinces are holding their local elections for governor and lawmakers, un hooked from the national presidential event next October.

In effect eight out of 22 provinces (another two already held them, Rio Negro and Neuquen during April) will be electing governor, local lawmakers and municipal representatives, (and members of a constitutional assembly in two of them) in what has been identified as Super May, because provincial incumbent parties fear a great opposition win and defeat of the Kitchener blend of Peronism next October. Thus the furthest away, the better for their political survival.

All eight elections will be held in the first two Sundays of May, some with electronic votes, others with the more traditional envelope ballots.

In the Argentine northeast, voters in Jujuy and La Rioja will be also choosing members for a constitutional assembly which will have the job, later, to amend the provincial constitutions.

Next Sunday May7, elections for governor and other provincial authorities will be chosen in Jujuy, Misiones and La Rioja, while the following Sunday, May 14 the other five will be going to the polls, La Pampa, Salta, San Juan, Tucuman and Tierra del Fuego.

Of the eight provinces only one is ruled by the opposition, Jujuy, where the current governor Gerardo Morales has presidential ambitions and is one of several pre candidates of the opposition coalition, “Together for Change” (Juntos por el Cambio). The number of registered voters in Jujuy is 586.870, which represents 1,6% of the total Argentine electoral roll call.

La Rioja is ruled by governor Ricardo Quintela, an ally of the Kirchnerism coalition, (the Front of All), and has 294,000 registered voters, equivalent to 0,86% of the total Argentine registry. Quintela is running for reelection and must defeat two contenders, federal lawmaker Felipe Alvarez, from the coalition opposition, and a nephew of ex president Carlos Menem, Martin Menem who belongs to the new party “Freedom Advances”, from economist Javier Milei.

Milei is a outsider of the political system with a strong pro Liberty message, who in less than a year has managed to create a political movement, criticizing politicians and corruption, the “political caste,” a magnet for the frustrated, disenchanted and fed up Argentine electorate, penniless and on the edge of hyper-inflation. This means he has good chances of becoming the next Argentine president in October, since the electoral scenario is no longer bi-polar, Kirchnerism and the divided remnants of Macri's opposition coalition, it now also includes “Freedom Advances,” with opinion polls showing it keeps growing in support.