Peronism loses control of the Senate

Buenos Aires. The Frente de Todos coalition of Argentine President Alberto Fernández lost the majority in the Senate and was left without the control of Congress, which will force it to seek consensus with the opposition to achieve governability in the next two years in office.

“The government has serious problems. It is a president who is totally drained of power. Second, it has no management. Third, it is a coalition that is broken. That in a situation with almost half of the population in poverty,” said the analyst Mariel Fornoni, from the Management & Fit consultancy.

The elections this Sunday, with a participation of more than 71%, partially renewed the chambers of deputies and senators, in which the center-right alliance Juntos advanced, of former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), although without achieving neither did the parliamentary majority.

In the Senate, the Peronist government would go from having 41 of 72 senators to only 35, according to the count of more than 98% of the votes. In the Chamber of Deputies, Peronism obtained 118 seats and the center-right opposition, 116.

Macri, the main opposition leader, announced that “these next two years are going to be difficult”, and assured that his coalition “will act with great responsibility, helping the transition to be as orderly as possible”, anticipating the presidential elections of 2023.

María Eugenia Vidal, former governor of the province of Buenos Aires and now elected deputy for Juntos, celebrated that “the majority of Argentines, millions of Argentines throughout the country, said enough.”

Under pressure to reach a new agreement with the International Monetary Fund, this will be the first time since the return of democracy in 1983 that Peronism will not have a majority in the Senate.

Political consultant Raúl Aragón envisioned cooperation between the forces. “There is a growing internal tension within Juntos, but it does not serve the opposition not to dialogue. It does not serve them to remain undemocratic for the 2023 presidential project, that is unsustainable.”