Former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner (2007-2015) criticized this Friday (31) the other big name in Peronism at the moment, Axel Kicillof, governor of the province of Buenos Aires, to whom she attributed the defeat to President Javier Milei’s party, A Liberdade Avança (LLA, in its acronym in Spanish), in the mid-term legislative elections, held on Sunday (26).
In a long text published in
It was the first time since 2003 that such elections took place on different dates. Peronism won the legislative election in Buenos Aires, held in September, but lost to the LLA last Sunday.
“All Peronist governors ((Sergio Raúl) Ziliotto de La Pampa, (Ricardo) Quintela de La Rioja, (Raúl) Jalil de Catamarca, (Osvaldo Francisco) Jaldo de Tucumán, (Gildo) Insfrán de Formosa) won these parliamentary elections (in their provinces). The exception in the province of Buenos Aires is due to a political error in the mistaken choice of electoral strategy, when deciding divide the elections”, wrote Cristina.
“I don’t say this looking at Monday’s newspaper (an expression that means giving an opinion on an event after it has happened), as ‘experts and analysts’ usually do. We said this publicly on April 14, when, faced with the governor’s decision to split the provincial election, as president of the national Justicialist Party, I instructed our political force in the Bonaéran Legislature to withdraw the Electoral Competition Bill, with the aim of having Bonaérenses vote only once, so as not to divide our efforts into two elections separated by just 49 days”, added the former president.
However, despite pressure from Cristina, the governor’s plan was maintained and the elections were held on separate dates.
A source from the Kicillof government told Clarín newspaper today that Cristina’s criticism of the governor, tipped to be the Peronist candidate for president in 2027, is “boring”. “We are not irritated by the letter because it forces arguments to try to fit reality into its reasoning”, he ironized.
In Sunday’s legislative elections, in which half of the seats in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and a third of the seats in the Senate were renewed, Milei’s LLA obtained 41% of the votes against 33% for the Peronist opposition, giving the president political breathing space to approve projects and avoid overturning vetoes in the Argentine Congress.