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Weekly Report - 15 August 2019 (WR-19-32)

Crushed Macri battling for survival as peso tumbles

President Mauricio Macri suffered a heavy defeat in Argentina’s primary elections (Paso) on 11 August. With neither Macri nor Alberto Fernández, the presidential candidate of the main opposition, facing an internal party rival, the Paso was in theory no more than a dress rehearsal, to gauge voter sentiment, ahead of the first round proper on 27 October. But in practice, with Fernández achieving a victory margin in excess of 15 percentage points, the Paso result goes far beyond psychological relevance. The main index of the Buenos Aires stock exchange, Merval, collapsed and the peso went into freefall at the prospect of radical Peronism returning to power. This will compound Macri’s difficulties between now and the first round, leaving him with acute governability problems on top of trying to mount an improbable electoral comeback. Such is the magnitude of the challenge facing Macri that it is now easier to see him failing to complete his term in December than securing re-election.

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