Argentinians voting in midterm elections of 2021. Photo: EFE.
General elections in Argentina will take place on October 22 of this year, the National Electoral Chamber (CNE) announced after approving the electoral schedule for the year. On that date, Argentinians will vote to elect the president and the vice president of the country, the chief of government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the governors of the 21 provinces, the 130 deputies of the Chamber of Deputies and the 24 senators, as well as provincial legislators, mayors, and municipal councilors.
The electoral authority announced that the provisional electoral roll will be published on May 5, and the deadline for corrections will be 10 days later, on May 15. The updated electoral roll will be used for the open, simultaneous and mandatory primary elections (PASO), to be held on August 13.
On June 24, the deadline for submitting the lists of pre-candidates for the PASO will end and the campaign for the primaries will begin. The definitive lists for the PASO vote will be released on July 14, and the call for the elections will be made before July 24.
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The electoral silence will begin on August 11, and the definitive scrutiny of the PASO will start on August 15. The National Electoral Boards will be constituted on August 23, and the campaign for the general elections will start on September 2.
According to the CNE, the mandatory presidential debates will take place on October 1 and 8. The electoral silence for the general elections will begin on October 20 at 08:00 a.m. local time.
In case a second round is required for the presidential election, the chosen date is November 19. The debate will take place on November 12.
The person most likely to win the presidential election, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has been disqualified from running for office by a federal court in a case widely denounced as lawfare. On December 6, 2022, the Federal Criminal Oral Court No. 2 of Buenos Aires sentenced Fernández to six years in prison and permanent disqualification from running for public office “for considering her criminally responsible for fraudulent administration to the detriment of the public administration” regarding road works in the province of Santa Cruz during her tenure as president (2007 -2015) and during that of ex-President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), her late husband.
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From the beginning of the case, Cristina Fernández showed that the case was politically motivated by the opposition and the judiciary to exclude her from national politics. “It is a firing squad,” she said, referring to the judicial process. The Argentinian judiciary remains dominated by the right wing, and the judges who ruled in her case were exposed for having colluded with the corrupt former President Mauricio Macri.
Although the disqualification cannot take effect until all legal resources for appeal are exhausted, Fernández de Kirchner announced after the ruling that she would not run for any public office in the general elections of 2023. However, on March 10, 2023, more than 10,000 members of various Kirchnerist trade unions and social movements rallied in the town of Avellaneda in the province of Buenos Aires to demand that the electoral ban on the former president be lifted.
The governor of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, who is close to Fernández, has stated that the people will “break the ban,” while the mayor of Avellaneda, Jorge Ferraresi, has called upon President Alberto Fernández to make an announcement rejecting the disqualification of Cristina Fernández.
(Al Mayadeen) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/AF
