On Sunday Argentines will be able to choose their candidates to the Senate and Lower House for the midterm October elections, in a process known as PASO, which means open mandatory, simultaneous primaries for all parties, but which are not compulsory for the electoral roll.
After two years out of service, Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata, which are 400 kilometres apart, are since Monday again linked by a train service that needs almost seven hours to reach its final destination. Buenos Aires provincial Governor María Eugenia Vidal said “It is no longer a promise - we have delivered.”
María Eugenia Vidal, governor of the province of Buenos Aires, reached an agreement with the World Bank for a 380-million-dollars loan to finance infrastructure works that would be beneficial to more than sixty municipalities. Bidding to start in March.
Argentine president Mauricio Macri will be moving in an armored sealed following this month's attack with stones during a rally in the city of Mar del Plata. The measure was announced by Security minister Patricia Bullrich who claimed political activists close to former president Cristina Fernandez of having organized the attack.
Pope Francis said he has no problems with Argentine president Mauricio Macri, whom he described as a well born, noble person, revealing that in the past, as mayor and archbishop of Buenos Aires, they had differences but always addressed them in private and positively.
A majority of Argentines continue to support president Mauricio Macri despite a raft of unpopular measures, public utilities rate increases, inflation, redundancies and slower activity, which his administration has been forced to implement in the first six months of his mandate in an attempt to reorganize the country's economy.
By Rengaraj Viswanathan (*) Mauricio Macri’s win will inspire the centre-right opposition parties that hope to replace leftist governments in Brazil and Venezuela but it is too early to declare, as some observers are doing, that the result marks the end of the Left in the region
Following claims of 'friendly fire', cracks are clearly surfacing in the Argentine ruling coalition strategy to conquer lost ground in the 25 October presidential vote which has forced a runoff on 22 November. Daniel Scioli was expected to beat his runner up by almost ten votes, but this did not happen, in effect Mauricio Macri was defeated by a mere 2.5 percentage points and his PRO party won the governorship of the strategic Buenos Aires province, Argentina's main electoral district.
Argentina's outgoing leader Cristina Fernandez gave an emotional campaign speech on Thursday in her first public address since a surprisingly weak performance by her handpicked candidate in the first-round presidential election on Sunday. Without mentioning allied candidate Daniel Scioli by name, the outgoing president implicitly backed him by calling for support for her progressive social policies to go on after she hands the presidency over to her successor in six weeks.
The first public opinion poll released since Argentina's Sunday presidential election and ahead of the 22 November runoff indicates that the opposition candidate Mauricio Macri is a few points ahead of incumbent Daniel Scioli in a tight race but still with a large percentage who remain undecided.