BA PROVINCE TEAM LINEUPS
Definition of the candidacies for the September 7 provincial elections in Buenos Aires Province went down to the wire of the Saturday midnight and beyond for the ruling Peronists who (divided between followers of Governor Axel Kicillof, ultra-Kirchnerites and the sector of 2023 presidential candidate Sergio Massa) jumped on two suspicious blackouts to stretch out their process until 2pm on Monday. Most attention was paid to the first and third of the eight electoral sections (the northern and southern halves of Greater Buenos Aires respectively) housing some 70 percent of the electorate. Here the leading candidates were respectively Tres de Febrero Mayor Diego Valenzuela and former provincial police inspector Maximiliano Bondarenko for Alianza La Libertad Avanza and provincial Infrastructure Minister Gabriel Katopodis and Lieutenant-Governor Verónica Magario for the Kirchnerite Fuerza Patria with 17 of the province’s 84 Peronist mayors also in the lists. The militant libertarian Las Fuerzas del Cielo sector responding to top advisor Santiago Caputo was almost totally frozen out.
LA DERECHA FEST
President Javier Milei was in his element as the “lion king” star at the La Derecha Fest militant libertarian encounter in Córdoba on Tuesday evening. There he underlined the importance of fighting and winning the “cultural battle” alongside maintaining macro-economic stability. Milei also repeated his boast of his government being “the best in history,” forecast a landslide in the October midterms which would surprise most people and made snide remarks against his Vice-President Victoria Villarruel. Three Protestant pastor were the curtain-raisers for Milei.
REIDEL OUT
Chief presidential advisor Demian Reidel resigned as from July 17, it emerged early last week, although he will continue to head the state company Nucleoeléctrica Argentina where he has ambitious plans for atomic energy. Reidel found himself on the wrong side of presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei, who has gradually been cleaning out her brother’s team of advisors, since last March when he joked that Argentina’s biggest problem was being peopled by Argentines. When President Javier Milei visited Prague in mid-2024, he proposed Reidel for the Nobel Prize for Economics along with himself.
LAMELAS SPEAKS OUT
Peter Lamelas, the United States ambassador-designate to Argentina, presented himself to the US Senate on Tuesday, saying that he would seek to limit “evil influences” in the Latin American region with a special emphasis on China while declaring US neutrality in the Malvinas sovereignty dispute. He also went further than most towards incriminating ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the 1994 terrorist bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre, pointing to both her 2013 memorandum of understanding with Iran and the 2015 death of special AMIA prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Some opposition deputies urged Milei not to accept the prospective ambassador’s credentials in the light of his controversial statements while Cristina Kirchner hit back with harsh comments in an X post entitled “Lamelas o Argentina.”
VETOES IN PIPELINE
Last Monday Congress finally sent to the executive branch the three laws (pension supplements, a two-year extension of the pension moratoria and emergency assistance for the handicapped) which President Javier Milei has vowed to veto as jeopardising his much-vaunted fiscal surplus. From then Milei has had 10 working days to issue his vetoes, which can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in Congress.
ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN
Economic activity inched 0.1 percent down from April in May, the INDEC statistics bureau announced on Monday, while registering an annual growth rate of five percent from an extremely low base in the first third of 2024.
FARM SHOW WEEK
The Rural Society farm show at the Palermo exhibition grounds will close tomorrow after running since July 17 with President Javier Milei due to inaugurate it today (in line with the curious custom of opening the exhibition on the eve of its closure). Milei is expected to announce the elimination of export duties on beef although farmers would like a more general reduction also including crops. Both presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei and Economy Minister Luis Caputo visited the farm show earlier in the week.
AFA LESS THAN AFFABLE
AFA Argentine Football Association treasurer Pablo Toviggino took offence to Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos saying that the visit of Lanús away fans to Rosario last Sunday had been politically exploited, concluding a barrage of insults by saying that he wished a “very happy and sad end very soon” for “the little man with yellow teeth” (prompting Francos to retort that he wondered if Toviggino had green fingers), also saying that Francos had no right to criticise an AFA which had given Argentina a World Cup among other triumphs. Security Minister Patricia Bullrich was quick to spring to the Cabinet Chief’s defence, saying that she would ban Toviggino from entry into football matches unless he retracted. The bickering overshadowed a second consecutive goal for returning Rosario Central star Angel Di María from the penalty spot.
MOTOGP BACK IN TOWN
The Argentina MotoGP will return to Buenos Aires from 2027, almost 30 years after it was last held there, Mayor Jorge Macri, announced on Monday. Since 2014, the race has been held at the Termas de Rio Hondo circuit, in the north-western province of Santiago del Estero. The last time a premier class race was held on the Oscar y Juan Galvez circuit, in the south side of the city, was in 1999. The track will undergo a major renovation and update to bring it up to current standards. “This event fills us with emotion, because Buenos Aires has long been the capital of the automobile and motorbike industry in the region and today it is beginning to regain that position,” said Macri. The mayor also said that he wanted to bring Formula 1 back to Buenos Aires, the home of five-time world champion Juan Manuel Fangio. “This is the first step in our bid to become a Formula 1 host city again,” he said.
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