Argentine President Alberto Fernandez called for dialogue with the opposition after Sunday’s midterm parliamentary elections, with projections showing that his governing coalition has lost control of the Argentine Congress.
Ahead of the election, there was widespread discontent over the state of the economy, which has been in recession since 2018 and was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Having been in the minority in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies — the lower house — Fernandez’s Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front), coalition looked set to drop from 41 to 35 seats in the 72-member Argentine Senate, based on projections with more than 90 percent of the votes counted.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“If the numbers are confirmed, effectively we’ve lost the quorum in the senate,” a government source said.
This would be the first time since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 that Peronism — a leftist movement based on former Argentine president Juan Peron that now covers a broad spectrum of political leanings — would not have a majority in the senate.
Fernandez is likely to be forced to make concessions to the opposition during the last two years of his mandate so that he can pass laws and make key appointments, including to the judiciary.
“We need to prioritize national agreements if we want to resolve the challenges we face,” Fernandez said, adding that he would approach opposition groups to try to find common ground.
“An opposition that is responsible and open to dialogue is a patriotic opposition,” he added.
Nearly half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies were up for grabs, as well as one-third of the senate seats, in Sunday’s vote.
Argentine Minister of the Interior Wado de Pedro said that the turnout in the compulsory election was nearly 72 percent.
Fernandez had been on the defensive since the Frente experienced a bruising defeat in September’s primaries, picking up just 33 percent of the vote, compared with 37 percent for the main opposition group Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change), led by Fernandez’s predecessor, Mauricio Macri.
“These next two years are going to be difficult,” Macri said on Sunday, while telling voters that he would “act with great responsibility.”
Fernandez “will have to negotiate law by law,” National University of La Matanza political science professor Raul Aragon said, adding that the opposition would likely be open to talks.
“It won’t serve them to not engage in dialogue, and appear anti-democratic” before the presidential elections in 2023, Aragon said.
Since the primaries, the government had been in damage limitation mode, announcing last month a deal with the private sector to freeze prices on more than 1,500 basic goods following street protests demanding greater food subsidies.
It has also increased the minimum wage and family allowances.
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