Buenos Aires City Mayor and Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) presidential candidate Horacio Rodríguez Larreta said today that he intends to wipe out Kirchnerism — the center-left faction of Peronism led by Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

“We obviously seek to end Kirchnerism forever,” he said today during a rally at the Almagro Club micro-stadium, in the Buenos Aires district of Tres de Febrero. “Forever!”

Today was the first event he shared with his vice-presidential candidate, Jujuy governor Gerardo Morales, since the announcement of the ticket.

“[Morales] is a guy who can withstand a lot,” Larreta said. “He demonstrated that this week, where he withstood with forbearance, firmness, and dialogue,” he said, referring to the police repression led by Morales’ government in Jujuy at demonstrators who protested against his constitutional reform.

“A few days ago I had to stop an attempted institutional coup d’état in the province of Jujuy,” Morales said in the event, referring to the protests.

Larreta also praised Morales for his incarceration of social leader Milagro Sala in 2016 and for lithium exploitation and medicinal cannabis crops in Jujuy.

“Unity” and proposals

“We want [our potential government] to be a change maintained over time. We already had an experience— we started a process of change and couldn’t sustain it,” he said, referring to the 2015-2019 JxC government led by Mauricio Macri, which ended when President Alberto Fernández took over after Macri lost his reelection bid.

“They came back, but that won’t happen again.”

Larreta announced that, if he wins the elections, the three pillars of his government will be “education, jobs, and security” and that during the next 45 days of the campaign, he will introduce a proposal every day. 

“We are going to speak about the topics which people really care about, we are not interested in political games and thinly-veiled jabs.”

Among other things, he said that we will “incarcerate” every drug dealer in the country, lower taxes, and end with the “lawsuit industry” — a common talking point among JxC members that references employment lawsuits that favor workers.

“We will defend unity, whatever other men –-and women–- do,” he said in an apparent stab at his coalition rival in the JxC primaries, Patricia Bullrich.

“They are leaving,” Larreta said about the ruling party. “They are leaving — patience. They do not have much time left.”