Argentina 2013 Midterm Election Readings

ARGENTINA - In Brief 28 Oct 2013 by Esteban Fernandez Medrano

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When analyzing the preliminary outcome of yesterday’s mid-term elections in Argentina one should focus on two main aspects.1) The government new power balance in the Congress2) The outlook for the 2015 presidential candidates.  With respect to the first point: despite a relatively mediocre electoral result, compared to the 2011 presidential elections, the ruling party Frente Para la Victoria (FPV), together with its political allies, will maintain its own quorum in both houses.Therefore, unless the government suffers a significant desertion over the next two years, it should be able to continue passing laws through the Congress without meaningful political resistance.In fact, in the lower House the FPV even gained 3 new seats. From December onwards, its total number of Deputies will go up from 114 to 117. Adding its historical allies, the FPV will sums to a total of around 132 votes, the same it had over the last two years and still above the 129 seats needed to have own quorum.In the Senate, FPV will kept its prior 32 senators, which added to its allies should sum up to a total of 39, above the 37 needed to have quorum.  In summary, even though the FVP obtained a poor result in key districts (such as the City and the Province of Buenos Aires), its electoral “defeat” was not strong enough to lose the ability to control the Congress. Therefore, over the next years the opposition ability to change laws or at least to stop some bills in the Congress remains relatively weak.Naturally this depends on how the historical allies of the FPV will respond in the future, as Cristina’s Fernandez de Kitchener’s term reaches its end towards December 2015. As the perspective of who is...