This year is an election year. A great part of the provinces and municipalities of Argentina have already made their decisions however, on a federal level, the mother of all battles is yet to occur.
The Province of Buenos Aires will carry out its election of governor and mayors on the same day that Argentine citizens elect the president and national legislators.
The agenda is as follows: on August 11, a mandatory election will be held (known as PASO) whose purpose is to resolve the internal elections or electoral fronts. The presidential formulas have a single ballot, therefore, public opinion understands that it will serve as the best tool to reveal citizen preferences. On Sunday, October 27, the presidential election will be held and if a ballotage is necessary, it will be held on November 24.
In this election, two political forces are faced. On the one hand, the ruling party (led by the party that President Macri founded) and, on the other, the electoral alliance Frente de Todos, led by the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Thus, the presidential election can be seen as a symbolic battle between two personages: Macri and Fernández de Kirchner.
The battle that has a particularity, both have a huge negative image among the Argentine electorate. Even so, the current president Macri is going for his re-election and Fernández de Kirchner wants to have power again.
Knowing this matter, Fernández de Kirchner chose a former collaborator of her husband’s government and a conspicuous critic of her to head the presidential formula. Thus, Alberto Fernández, former Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers of Néstor Kirchner, heads the presidential formula that has Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as a candidate for vice president. Thus, the presidential formula of “Los Fernández” allows Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to run away from the spotlight of public opinion.
President Macri returned the play integrating the presidential formula to the leader, for many years, of the Peronist caucus in the senator (Miguel Ángel Pichetto). Macri can't avoid public lights but raised an (ex) opponent on the political stage so that the spotlight does not focus on him all the time.
These two political forces in conflict, these two personages who want to hide from public opinion, have a scenario: The Province of Buenos Aires. The current governor of the ruling party, Maria Eugenia Vidal, is going for re-election. While Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who has in this electoral district its largest flow of votes, chose his former finance minister, Axel Kicillof, as his dolphin to regain political control in the most important province of Argentina.