As required by law, political coalitions in Argentina presented their electoral platforms yesterday ahead of this year’s presidential elections. These platforms are formalities and not legally binding to a future government program. However, they are mandatory and expected to contain a declaration of principles, a program, or the foundation of the political actions a coalition running in an election intends to take.

Among them, the two main electoral fronts – the ruling Unión por la Patria (Homeland Union), formerly known as Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front), and the opposing Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change)– presented documents in the Electoral Court that lay the foundation for what their potential government would do should they win the elections.

Libertarian candidate Javier Milei’s platform showcasing a plethora of extreme right-wing proposals aimed at  “guaranteeing traditional lifestyles” was published on social media exactly one month ago.

Unión por la Patria: “We have to discuss”

The Unión platform starts by mentioning the attempted assassination of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last September. “It meant the undoing of the democratic pact that was rebuilt in 1983, which implied that the physical suppression of a [political] adversary was unthinkable.”

As for the economic plan, the platform says the country needs a broad consensus to gain economic independence and “get out of the bi-monetary economy, the main problem of the country.” The need for a societal pact among sectors is repeated throughout the document.

The coalition also said the State has to “regulate and articulate [the sectors] that the market excludes and abandons,” while also mentioning the need for a “virtuous alliance” between public and private sectors.” The  document lists specific proposals like “recovering salaries and pensions’ purchasing power, guaranteeing and defending current labor rights as well as promoting new ones, stabilizing prices without affecting  employment level, recovering workers’ salaries’ participation in the national income, demonopolizing and stimulating competition,” among others. 

The platform also strongly criticizes Mauricio Macri’s administration (2015-2019), especially for the “return of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a last-resort lender, allowing the colossal US dollar flight that started in 2018.” The program deems the US$44 billion loan Macri took with the IMF in 2018 “phenomenal and criminal.”

The document also evidences some of the infighting between the coalition’s different factions, namely between President Alberto Fernández on one side and Cristina Kirchner and Economy Minister Sergio Massa on the other.

Regarding Fernández, the platform says that “ruling in this context was a great challenge,” listing the COVID-19 pandemic, the debt level left by the previous administration, the Russian-Ukrainian war and the increase in energy prices, as well as this year’s historic drought that slashed the US dollar income from crop exports.

However, the document also states that “ruling requires responsibility and courage when the time comes to make decisions to build a strong state independent from factual powers, capable of promoting development and determined to guarantee rights and satisfy the demands of 21st century citizens.”

“Thinking about our future implies answering a few questions,” the document says. “What are we going to do with the IMF? How are we going to reconcile the need for dollars to pay private external debt as well as the IMF, with the dollars needed to sustain Argentine development and the investment for different sectors of industry?”

“These are some of the things we have to discuss – how to build a sustainable Argentina.”

“Our future lies in our history. It’s with everyone, it’s with you, it’s for the homeland,” the document concludes.

Juntos por el Cambio: “A stabilization plan”

Juntos por el Cambio’s platform is more direct. Titled “The Argentina we can be,” the 21-page document is divided into nine chapters with specific proposals  – economy, security, and labor, among others.

“The dilemma we face this year is the following: either we take the path of change or we dramatically deepen the backwardness pattern in which kirchnerism has submerged us,” the document starts.

The program doesn’t mention the International Monetary Fund, but uses a lot of its talking points, like devaluation, lowering fiscal deficit, and decreasing the amount of Potenciar Trabajo welfare program beneficiaries.

Among their economic proposals, the document mentions the need to “move towards a rapid unification of the exchange rate.” Argentina currently has more than a dozen exchange rates and has enforced strict capital control to deal with an international reserve scarcity crisis  – the unification of all these exchange rates would mean a rapid devaluation of the peso.

They also vow to put an end to “the current scheme of administered trade” — namely, the SIRA system which imposes controls on imports, created by the current administration in the midst of the international reserve scarcity.

Juntos por el Cambio also proposes a “stabilization plan” with the goal of “drastically reducing inflation.” 

“Argentines will have a national currency and an orderly macroeconomy. These are essential conditions for growth and job creation,” they said. One of their presidential candidates, Patricia Bullrich, has also proposed accepting the US dollar as the national currency, alongside the Argentine peso.

The program also proposes a decrease in public spending, “a responsible tax reduction” and “guaranteeing the independence of the Central Bank” for its priority to be “price stability.”

“We will put a stop to the [lawsuit] industry that makes our SMEs go bankrupt,” they said – the “lawsuit industry” a common talking point among Juntos por el Cambio members, in reference to costly employment lawsuits that favor workers.

Some security-related proposals include the “transfer of federal forces stationed at the border to critical areas like the Rosario and Buenos Aires metropolitan area,” the opening of new agencies and divisions against drug trafficking, as well as using the Armed Forces for this task.

The last chapter of the document proposes “building an austere, efficient, and modern State that makes life easier for its citizens.”