Wednesday at midnight was the deadline for Argentina’s political sector to present its coalitions for the upcoming elections, an event that went by in the midst of tension and uncertainty regarding who would end up in the alliances.

The first big news of the day came when ruling coalition Frente de Todos (FdT) announced it was changing its name to Unión por la Patria. Opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), on the other hand, remained the same after Córdoba governor Juan Schiaretti declined to join and decided to compete with his own front Hacemos por Nuestro País (We work for our country.)

JxC registered its coalition close to the midnight deadline with no name or party changes for the August 13 PASO primaries. Jujuy governor and Radical Party (UCR, its Spanish acronym) president Gerardo Morales confirmed this upon leaving a meeting held last night at party headquarters.

A JxC faction led by Buenos Aires City mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Morales was hoping Schiaretti, a non-kirchnerist peronist, would join, with the hope of injecting more political diversity into the coalition.

Morales ruled out Schiaretti’s incorporation last night. “We’ll see after the elections. If the people decide this, we’ll keep negotiating until the last minute with other political forces to strengthen our possibilities of ruling the country.”

Propuesta Republicana (PRO) president Federico Angelini also said that if JxC wins the general elections, Schiaretti will have the chance to join them after December 10, the day the next Argentine president will be inaugurated. “He can join a parliamentary agreement”, he said. 

“It wasn’t the right time”, added Gastón Manes, UCR Congress president, who is also presidential candidate Facundo Manes’ brother.

Schiaretti’s new front

The Córdoba governor decided to register his own coalition called Hacemos por Nuestro País with fellow non-kirchnerist peronists and local parties like the Socialist Party, the Christian-Democrat Party, and the Autonomist Party.

After three governor terms (two of them consecutive), Schiaretti can’t run for reelection again. He will now be running for president for the first time.

Schiaretti has said he is not and will never be a part of JxC, and that he would like to compete against its candidates in the primary elections.

Even though Rodríguez Larreta couldn’t get Schiaretti to join, he did get liberal economist José Luis Espert to come on board. Asked whether he’d run for president or Buenos Aires province governor, Espert said the decision is pending: “We’ll see in the next few days, in light of what’s better for the people and the kirchnerist-opposing alliance.”

Electoral threshold

The main coalitions also agreed on the electoral threshold for the primaries, which is the minimum number of votes required to qualify for the general elections. This is a decision each coalition makes on its own.

The threshold is meant for deputy candidates. In order for a presidential candidate to place his people on the ballot for the national election, his faction, starting with whoever comes in second, has to surpass 30% of the vote in the PASO primaries.

Juntos por el Cambio agreed on a 20% minimum vote requirement for Mercosur Parliament candidates. In the case of deputies and senators ballots, each district will determine its electoral rules.

Unión por la Patria, on the other hand, had a long and tense debate about this. The kirchnerist sector pushed for a 40% threshold, hoping to leave Ambassador to Brazil Daniel Scioli’s people out of the general elections. Scioli, who is close to President Alberto Fernández and wants to run for president, demanded a 25% threshold. Ultimately, they agreed on 30%. 

Scioli is not the only Unidad por la Patria member who wants to run for president. Chief of Staff Agustín Rossi has launched his candidacy, and Interior Minister Eduardo ‘Wado’ de Pedro has given various hints he will compete, but has yet to confirm. Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof and Economy Minister Sergio Massa are also possible candidates.

Patria Grande leader Juan Grabois was one of the first ones to announce he would be competing in the primaries. The Herald reached out to his spokespeople, who confirmed that if Massa is chosen as the coalition’s sole candidate, Grabois would compete in the primaries. However, if there were to be a candidate in representation of “the decimated generation” —meaning the descendants of the people killed by the last military dictatorship—, like Kicilof or Wado de Pedro (who is the son of desaparecidos), he would work with either of them “on a joint program supporting them.”