MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Massa promises to form a national unity government

Massa also said he wanted the best people onboard his government regardless of their previous political alliances, thus distancing himself somehow from Kirchnerism

Argentine Economy Minister Sergio Massa said after winning Sunday's presidential election that “the rift” is over and that “a new stage begins on Dec. 10,” for which he must defeat Liberal Congressman Javier Milei in the Nov. 19 runoff.

In this sense, Massa called on those who voted for “for [leftist congresswoman] Myriam [Bregman]” and “[Cordoba governor] Juan [Schiaretti],” because with him a government of national unity will begin.

“The Argentina that is coming is the Argentina of the embrace, of the countryside and industry, of the interior and the city, of the development of the railroad, of businessmen and workers sitting at the same table, building the sum of capital and labor,” Massa promised.

“I want to call on you to have the capacity to put an end to the idea of destroying the other, to the idea of friend and foe,” he also stressed.

“I know that many of those who voted for us are the ones who are suffering the most: I will not abandon them. They should know that as President since December 10, I will not let them down. Tonight, I also want to speak to those Argentines who went to the polls but left their ballots blank. I want to speak to those Argentines who, perhaps out of despair or anger, stayed home,” he continued.

Massa also addressed ”those thousands and thousands of radicals who, all over Argentina, share with us democratic values such as public education, the independence of the powers, the construction of institutional values that Argentina deserves.

The historic Radical Civic Union (UCR) of former Presidents Hipólito Irigoyen and Raúl Alfonsín has lost strength since the collapse of 1989 and has joined other coalitions to stay in the fray. It was part of the so-called Alianza that brought Fernando de la Rúa to the Casa Rosada in 1999 and of Cambiemos/Juntos por el Cambio that brought Mauricio Macri to the presidency in 2015.

However, some radicals, such as Alfonsín's son Ricardo (current ambassador to Spain) and Leopoldo Moreau (father of Lower House Speaker Cecilia Moreau), have switched sides and openly joined Kirchnerism.

In this scenario, Massa insisted on “the need to have an Argentina in peace, with order; an Argentina based on the construction of democratic values, respect for institutions, without uncertainty and with certainty”, and promised to “do my best in the next 30 days to earn the trust of those who voted for other candidates on Sunday”.

To that end, he relied on his commitment to building “a homeland in which we will undoubtedly have the capacity for our children to choose to go to school with a computer in their backpack and not with a gun,” in an obvious reference to Milei's plans to abolish all restrictions on gun ownership.

“I am also convinced that this is not a shitty country, as they say, it is a country that together we are going to put it in the place it deserves,” Massa went on. It is “the country where my parents arrived many years ago, escaping war,” he also explained while acknowledging he was not to be given “a blank check.”