Election Results & more – 26th Oct 2023

¡Buenos días from Greenway Parks! This is the Rorshok Argentina Update from the 26th of October, twenty twenty-three. A quick summary of what's going down in Argentina.

Let’s start with the biggest news of the week. Last Sunday, the 22nd, presidential elections were held, with Sergio Massa, the Peronist candidate, beating far-right libertarian Javier Milei against the expectations of many. Massa got 37% of the votes, while the runner-up got 30%. Patricia Bullrich, the candidate for the conservative party Together for Change or Juntos por el cambio, came in third with 24%.

However, the race for the presidential seat is far from over. Given that none of the candidates got over 45% of votes or more of a ten-point difference over the other, there’ll be a ballotage on the 19th of November.

Still, after the upset on Sunday, the libertarian is seemingly desperate to form alliances. The party Liberty Advances, or La Libertad Avanza, released a statement on Wednesday the 25th that backtracked on its leader’s more extreme proposed measures. The party said that, for example, if Milei won the presidency, people wouldn’t be allowed to sell their organs. The man even stated he may call leftists to help manage the “Human Capital” ministry.

The main question is who Bullrich’s voters will decide to support. The candidate confirmed her political support for Milei on Wednesday the 25th, stating that since her faction “ratified the values of change and freedom, they could not stay neutral.”

Bullrich might have chosen to stand by the libertarian, but the rest of the political coalition might have other ideas. Some factions within it, like the radicalists, have stated they would not support Milei. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, former presidential candidate for Together for Change, also refused to support Milei, saying he was “a new form of populism, a jump into the void.”

How do these results impact the Economy? Argentine sovereign bonds fell, with the overseas notes performing the worst. The election results have also generated insecurity among investors, who likely hoped it would bring a regime change. However, they brought stability in other ways. The parallel exchange rate hasn’t fluctuated much as it has settled at 1,100 pesos to the dollar.

On that subject, Argentina’s majority state-owned energy company YPF’s US-listed stocks fell up to 11%. Fortunately, by Thursday, the 26th, Argentine stocks abroad rose 6%.

As for the elections for mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, Leandro Santoro, the Peronist candidate, conceded his loss against Jorge Macri. Macri missed reaching the necessary votes to avoid a second round by only 1.5%, but now that Santoro has backed down from the race, he’ll officially be the next mayor.

Moving on, remember disgraced Loma de Zamora mayor Martín Insaurralde? A few weeks ago, he was caught on an ill-fated trip to Marbella, where he treated models to expensive gifts and yacht rides. On Tuesday the 24th, federal police raided the home of Sofía Clerici, one of the women who accompanied Insaurralde, and seized almost 600,000 dollars and expensive watches and other items. This further muddies the former mayor’s image.

The anti-corruption office has warrants and requests for information in the works for Insaurralde and his former wife, Jessica Cirio. This is a new low for Insaurralde, who is being investigated for illicit enrichment and money laundering because of the infamous trip.

Speaking of police raids, remember we talked about “The Croat” or Ivo Rojnicaor in a story from a previous show. Well, he was arrested on Tuesday, the 24th, in his home. The police were investigating him for money laundering linked to the Sinaloa cartel.

In the investigation, the police also found out that the Croat’s grandfather, also named Ivo Rojnica, had settled in Argentina after escaping persecution from the Yugoslavian government. However, in later years, he was accused of taking part in the nationalist group “Ustasha,” which had had ties to the Nazis.

It’s time to change the subject, and this news will surely have many scratching their heads. Argentines already dread going to the supermarket because of the country’s high inflation, but they don’t usually have to worry about the quality of the products offered. Nevertheless, the agency that oversees food safety, ANMAT, recently recalled three brands of olive oil, Cruz del Eje, La Costa, and San Marco Premium, because they didn’t have the necessary sanitary permits to be commercialized.

An anonymous tip to the provincial food control agency of Córdoba triggered the recall. The ANMAT also stated that the registers about where and when they manufactured products were fake.

As if dealing with elections and fake olive oil wasn’t enough, the inhabitants of Canning, a department in the southwest of the Buenos Aires province, now have to deal with a puma on the loose. Security cameras from the area captured the wild cat on Tuesday the 24th at night. The NGO World Apart, or Mundo Aparte, is conducting a search to catch it but warned residents to keep their pets inside and stay calm if they encounter it.

In other news, beloved rock musician Ricardo Iorio passed away suddenly last Tuesday at sixty-one years old. He founded bands V8, Hermética, and Almafuerte, seminal to Argentine heavy metal, and was vital to Argentina’s music scene. However, his extreme nationalism sometimes made him a divisive figure.

He had been plagued by strife in the past few years. He had been involved in several car crashes, although none were severe. The singer and bassist had even been fired from a gig to perform the National Anthem in Argentina’s twenty twenty-two World Cup qualifier match against Bolivia. Before his death, he’d complained of chest pain, and an ambulance was called, but unfortunately, he died on the way to the hospital.

The most recent piece of news is that on Thursday, the 26th, the county’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that twenty-one Argentines are being held hostage by Hamas. However, according to government officials, the names of the hostages haven’t been disclosed for security reasons.

Argentine diplomats and Interpol officials in the country are also collaborating with agents from Israel and Qatar, whose government is in contact with Hamas, to see if they can secure their release. Reportedly, Hamas had murdered nine Argentine nationals.

They say bad things come in threes, but we’ll stop at two. On a more positive note, Argentine sportspeople are shining in this year’s edition of the Pan-American Games in Santiago, Chile.

On Monday, the 23rd, wakeboarder Eugenia De Armas put on a show and earned the country’s first gold medal in the games.

Later, on Tuesday the 24th, swimmer Ulises Saravia performed a fantastic comeback to earn the country’s first silver medal. The Mar del Plata native had placed seventh in the first preliminaries but ended up second in the 100-meter backstroke.

In other sports-related news, the national rugby team, the Pumas, may be out of the World Cup after losing the semifinals against New Zealand, but that doesn’t mean they’ll leave empty-handed. On Friday the 27th, they will face England to see who’ll come in third. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears open because they might bring the bronze home.

And more positive news to wrap up this episode. One family found a way to make their agricultural business truly circular so that nothing would go to waste. The Berinagas started off cultivating wheat, corn, and soy exclusively but quickly realized that products with aggregated value would sell for more. That’s why they began building a mill. But they didn’t stop there. They started looking for ways to take advantage of the byproducts the process created.

That’s why they decided to build factories to convert the remnants of the soy and corn they milled into chicken feed, biodiesel, and bioethanol. As if that wasn’t enough, they later decided to begin raising chickens, which they fed with the feed they produced. Life gave them lemons, and they didn’t just make lemonade.

And that's it for this week!

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¡Nos vemos la próxima semana!