Buenos Aires Herald 
With the election candidate filing deadline for the primaries fast approaching, definitions are speeding up across all political parties and coalitions. The latest news from opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) came this Saturday morning, when Radical Party (UCR, its Spanish acronym) member Facundo Manes tweeted that he would be pulling his bid to compete for the JxC presidential nomination.
“The main leaders of [the Radical Party] have decided to join two [presidential] tickets led by PRO members. I believe in party democracy and respect their decision,” Manes tweeted, in reference to fellow Radical Party comrades Gerardo Morales and Luis Petri, who be the running mates for PRO presidential candidates Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia Bullrich, respectively.
“Because of all this, I’ve decided I won’t be running in these elections. I want to thank all the people who supported me,” he later added. “We are living in times that are difficult enough as they are for politicians to continue arguing among themselves and for politics to keep on fragmenting.”
In his statement, Manes also left some general thoughts about Argentine politics. “Argentina needs modern politicians, who look to the future more than the past, who embrace the youth on the streets, in the universities, in the neighborhoods, and can sit them at the negotiation table.”
“We need a political [culture] where individual leaderships are never above the common good.”
The decision comes only hours before the Saturday at midnight deadline for all candidacies to be filed. Up until this announcement, Manes was scheduled to compete against Larreta and Bullrich in the upcoming primaries, but he was left with little party support within the JxC coalition after Morales and Petri decided to join PRO led presidential tickets.
Manes, a neurologist and neuroscientist by training, launched his political career in 2021 by running for Buenos Aires province national deputy as a Radical Party member within the JxC coalition. He won a seat after the ballot he was on got 39% of the votes.
