Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay: Decisive Elections for the Region

During the next weeks there will be an electoral coincidence, of presidential elections and other parliamentary and provincial offices in Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.

It will be of the utmost importance since the vote will decide the continuity of state, nationalist or neoliberal projects in their respective countries.

This key convergence will be extremely significant for the recomposition of the Latin American geopolitical spectrum, which gave way from the so-called “Latin American progressive cycle” to the “new rise of the regional right.”

Electoral trends suggest that there will be a turnaround and change of constitutional regime in at least two of these countries.

CASE of ARGENTINA
In addition to electing president and vice president, Argentines will elect 130 national deputies and 24 national senators. In several provinces and in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the same day, executive and legislative authorities will also be elected.

As in previous elections, for a slate to be declared the winner, it will be sufficient for it to collect 45% of the affirmative votes, or 40%, and a difference of at least 10% with which it occupies second place. In the absence of these results, there will be a second round between the two slates with the most votes.

In the mandatory primaries (STEP) of August 11, 2019, the final returns established that most of the citizens participated in the presidential primaries of the opposition Frente de Todos (FT), supporting the candidacy of Alberto Fernández with Cristina Fernández with 49.49% of the total affirmative votes.

Secondly, the official alliance Together for Change (JpC), with the candidacy of Mauricio Macri, was supported by 32.93% of the votes.

Preliminary surveys for the next election show the following data:

Although the figures show a clear victory for the “Fernández team” in the first round, the wide margin of error in the interviewers prior to the STEP regarding the result, leaves open the possibility of a second round.

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The Argentine economic crisis has been a cross-cutting issue in the previous presidential one, and the result of the PASO placed the Macri government in serious trouble, with the worsening of the negative trends in the economic indicators after the internal ones.

Including, the International Monetary Fund imposed conditions to continue disbursing the Argentine economy; until the most predictable scenario is defined, there will be no business with the Macri administration.
The economic denominator is an essential issue in the definition, not only of the next electoral result, but also in the configuration of political impetus and instances of support for both Macri and Fernández.
In other words, the Argentine economy is given to its creditors and they give up the re-election of Macri, so there are serious elements that indicate the possibility of lobbying against the most likely new government.
The most likely result today in Argentina means a setback for the regional right in an important bastion.

The pension reform, launched in December 2017, began a downward cycle of unpopularity for Mauricio Macri in Argentina (Photo: Archive)

However, the Fernández government is expected to assume a “moderate left” position and its future will depend on internal support coalitions, with Cristina Fernández in a position of greater leadership in the popular field. It has consolidated the current support floor through a multipurpose platform between leftist leaderships and unions.
The role of the eventual new Argentine government in the regional geopolitical context is yet to be defined, but it must necessarily be considered as a significant element of the recession of the neoliberal forces in the region, especially since Argentina is an important actor in the different Latin American platforms of commerce and diplomacy

CASE OF BOLIVIA

Bolivia is preparing to elect the president and vice president of the Plurinational State, plus 130 deputies and 36 senators for the 2020-2025 government period.
With more than a decade of mandate, Evo Morales, of the Movement To Socialism (MAS), presents himself before the re-election with a Bolivian economy in extraordinary condition. This is the South American country with the highest sustained growth in the last decade, with inflation below 5%, a revalued national currency.
Along the same lines, Bolivia has seen a significant increase in the purchasing power of the population, a decrease in socioeconomic inequality and a substantial improvement in public and social services.
President Morales will face a divided opposition represented by Carlos Mesa, from the Community of Citizens (CC), and Oscar Ortiz, from Bolivia Says No (BDN), as the main opponents, the first being the loudest promoter of loud neoliberalism under American tutelage.
Morales looks like the most likely winning option in the first round of elections, scheduled for October 20. To obtain the result in the first round, the MAS must obtain more than 50% of the votes validly cast; or a minimum of 40%, with a difference of 10% compared to the second most voted candidacy.
The odds point more to the second scenario; that Morales surpasses 40% and obtains 10% more votes than Mesa. The most recent surveys offer the following scenario:

The efforts of the Bolivian opposition are moving today to reach the second electoral round, so the claim is to extend the political arena until December, date of the probable second round.
For that purpose, the Bolivian right has assumed a “citizens campaign”, parallel to that of Mesa and Ortiz, marked by the “civic violence” capitalized by foundations, associations and NGOs, apparently non-proselytizers of Crucianism. They have made important mobilizations where they call to vote in “punishment” against Morales and affirm that they will declare themselves in “disobedience” what they already call “electoral fraud”.

Members of the Cruceñista Youth Union and the 21F movement vandalized the MAS campaign center in Santa Cruz (Photo: ATB Digital)

The incongruous instruction of sending (supporters) to vote against, but also that there will be fraud, has the clear object of propitiating a closed margin in Morales’ victory in the first round or leading the election until December, in order to promote a pronounced electoral wear that would be marked due to political destabilization, a scenario that Bolivia has long ignored and therefore it’s been possible to promote local economic growth.

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Bolivia is on the threshold of a revolution of colors once again boosted by crucianism, this time under the denomination of “disobedience” and the struggle for “federalism,” — what they now call the separatist and secessionist “autonomism” of the violence in the year 2008.
The ingredients of the opening of a cycle of pronounced political instability are on the table in Bolivia, for the shades and agendas raised by the Cruceñismo in recent weeks.

Everything would happen simultaneously to the elections and after these, despite the favorable electoral result for Morales that, although it may be very solid, will be irrelevant to the detonation of an agenda of regime change that has been germinating in that country and is preparing for a moment like the present one.
It is also likely that after the elections the MAS government will have to carry out economic reforms that result in an adjustment to its monetary exchange rate, which will mean a substantive ingredient to the events of confrontation and transversal political chaos that will try to raise the cruceñismo and other factors of the Bolivian right.

URUGUAY CASE

The Uruguayan pre-electoral political context is defined by the clear trends of the polls for the presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, October 27.
Uruguayan politics is the most stable in South America, but the current context is beginning to show particularities that could reach a zenith through the results of October 27, which could imply a return to the hegemony of the Frente Amplio (FA) for more than a decade.
The conservative right could return to power in Uruguay.
All the scenarios prior to the first presidential electoral round make clear a majority intention to vote in favor of the FA official and his presidential candidate Daniel Martínez, against the strongest opposition option, that of the National Party (PN), with Luis Lacalle Pou as candidate.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Party (PC), with economist Ernesto Talvi, are ranked as third by several pollsters.
The latest measurements yield the following data:

However, despite the favorable scenario for the so-called “conservative left”, according to the electoral regulations, the result will not be defined in a first round, so there will be a second round in November, where the electoral composition will change.
To win in the first round the winner must reach the absolute majority .
In an almost certain ballot to be held on November 24, former Montevideo mayor Daniel Martínez would face former coach Lacalle Pou, who in that case is expected to have the support of economist Talvi and other opposition sectors. That is the crux of the electoral composition after the first round.
The correlation of forces of small parties is today has between 10% and 20% support, and these are opposition organizations, right-wing, that could join forces against the FA.
Indeed, in a second-round scenario, the polls already reviewed give all, without major discrepancies, a victory to the PN with a closed margin. Only upcoming events or a radical and effective campaign change could keep the FA in government, and yet the chances are slim.
For the next Uruguayan government, the forms of governance, together with the parliament, will be crossed by the fact that the small parties will give the legislative body a multicolored shape. This is another peculiarity of these Uruguayan elections, which is a sign of an exhaustion of the traditional parties in that country.
The number of parties with chances of obtaining positions in parliament is unprecedented. This could complicate the government management of the next president.
According to surveys from June to the present, up to nine parties could obtain parliamentary representation, a fact with few precedents in Uruguay. There are already those who speak of “a future multicolored coalition government”, and in any case, if the FA is elected, the parliamentary context will be diffuse.
It will not be so, if Luis Lacalle Pou of the PN forms a coalition for the second round, which favors the political pacts necessary to govern freely with parliament.
The result in the parliamentary electoral duel will have a lot to do with the development of political subjectivities and voting intentions for the second presidential round. Perhaps there also resides to a large extent the fact that the FA can be the winner, with a closed margin, in front of Lacalle.
That factor, and that the right doed not unite, would be key in favor of the FA.