With under two weeks to go until polling day, the leading candidates in the Argentine presidential election are attempting to reach out beyond their core supporters. Daniel Scioli, the candidate of the ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV) faction of the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists), has been seeking to reassure Argentina’s business community in an attempt to gain enough support to win outright in the first round on 25 October. Meanwhile Mauricio Macri, from the centre-right opposition Cambiemos coalition, is attempting to reach out to non-Kirchnerista Peronists, while Sergio Massa, from Una Nueva Alternativa (UNA), is promoting a tough line…
ARGENTINA | Dealing with holdouts The debate over Argentina’s attitude towards the so-called ‘holdouts’, those investors who refused to accept a haircut on their Argentine bonds after debt restructuring, has resurfaced over recent days. Mauricio Macri, the presidential candidate for the centre-right Cambiemos coalition, said the administration of President Cristina Fernández was leaving a “bomb to explode” in the next government by failing to deal with the issue. Both Daniel Scioli, Fernández’s chosen successor, and Macri have indicated they would hold talks to end the dispute which has kept Argentina shut out of international capital markets. PARAGUAY | Cement shortage…
The Chilean government presented its draft 2016 budget to congress last week, and it was not a good news story: amid global economic weakness and depressed copper prices, the finance minister, Rodrigo Valdés, said government spending will have to expand more slowly next year; the official forecast for GDP growth in 2016 has also been cut once more (down to 2.75%). Yet at the same time there are signs that President Michelle Bachelet’s long fall in the opinion polls, if not reversing, may at least be bottoming out. It is too early to make any definitive claims on the subject…
In the first state visit by a Brazilian president to the country since 2005, President Dilma Rousseff travelled to Colombia on 9 October, four days later than planned due to the political crisis unfolding in Brasília. Trade between the two countries has grown by 165% since the last occasion a Brazilian head of state, Lula da Silva (2003-2011), visited, to reach around US$4bn a year. But it is worth noting that despite the fact Colombia is the third largest economy in the region, it is still only Brazil’s seventh-largest trading partner among Latin American countries. Ostensibly, the purpose of President…
Under Brazilian law, it is the sole prerogative of the speaker of the federal lower chamber of congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against a head of state. However, Eduardo Cunha, the current speaker of the lower chamber, and other opposition deputies in favour of impeachment, had designed a ruse to circumvent that particular legal obstacle. According to local media, Cunha planned to reject officially one of the impeachment requests before the chamber; the opposition would then appeal that decision. Such an appeal would only require a simple majority to overturn Cunha’s ruling and would therefore authorise the establishment of a…