Presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez addresses supporters at the “Frente de Todos” party headquarters after primary elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019. The “Frente de Todos” presidential ticket with former President Cristina Fernández emerged as the strongest vote-getter in Argentina’s primary elections Sunday, indicating conservative President Mauricio Macri will face an uphill battle going into general elections in October. (AP Photo/Sebastian Pani)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine stocks and currency plummeted on Monday after Argentine President Mauricio Macri was snubbed by voters who appeared to hand a resounding primary victory to a populist ticket with his predecessor, Cristina Fernández.

The preliminary results from Sunday’s voting suggest the conservative Macri will face an uphill battle going into general elections in October and gives the populists who governed Argentina and butted heads with investors for most of the past two decades a strong chance of returning to power.

The result stunned financial markets which remember Cristina Fernández’s 2007-2015 government when she nationalized Spanish oil company Repsol’s stake in local company YPF, took over the private pension system and intervened heavily in the economy with exports restrictions and currency controls.

About a third of the Argentine companies that trade in U.S. markets lost half of their value Monday, but losses were extreme across the board with the Merval index dropping by 35% in mid-afternoon trading.

With 99% of polling stations tallied early Monday, official results gave the presidential slate headed by Alberto Fernández and his vice presidential running mate, Cristina Fernández, about 48% of the votes in a primary vote featuring 10 candidates. Macri and his running mate, Miguel Ángel Pichetto, had 32% — a wide margin that revealed the depth of Macri’s weakness, potentially positioning the Fernández team to win in the first round of a general election voting on Oct. 27.

To be elected president in the first round, candidates need to finish with at least 45% of the votes or have 40% and a greater than 10-point advantage over the nearest rival. If no candidate wins outright in October, there will be a November runoff.

“We’ve had a bad election and that obliges us to redouble our efforts so that in October we will continue with change,” Macri said in a late-night address. “I think it is very important a dialogue continues in this country, and that we continue explaining to the world what it is we want.”

Former Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna trailed far behind the two front-running slates with 8.4% of the votes, which is still potentially enough support to give him a kingmaker role in the fall.

The election functioned largely as a poll for the October vote. All of the parties already had their candidates chosen and the only practical result was to eliminate a few minor parties that got less than 1.5% of the overall votes from upcoming general election.

The pro-business Macri has the support of financial markets and Washington, but lost popularity amid a deep economic crisis that drove the inflation rate to nearly 50% last year. He says he is taking the necessary, painful steps to get the economy going after 12 years of leftist populism under Cristina Fernández and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

But his pleas for patience while his economic reforms take affect fell on largely deaf ears as Argentines battle rising poverty and high inflation. A recent lending package from the International Monetary Fund that totaled upward of $55 billion was unpopular. Most Argentines blame the IMF for encouraging policies that led to the country’s worst economic crisis in 2001.

“It’s clear that Macri’s weakest point is the management of the economy, despite the fact that it has improved in the last three months,” said Mariel Fornoni, director of the political consultancy Management & Fit.

The Fernández ticket, whose two members are not related, contends Macri must be defeated so they can fight rising poverty and homelessness.

Alberto Fernández, who was Cristina Fernández’s chief of staff during her initial term in 2007-2011, expressed satisfaction with Sunday’s result and blamed Macri for the current market unrest.

“The markets are uneasy because of the situation created by this government,” Alberto Fernández told Radio 10. “All Argentines will accompany this effort but it is his responsibility.”

Cristina Fernández is currently facing a series of trials for corruption during her 2007-2015 administration. She denies the allegations.

In a recorded message from the southern province of Santa Cruz, she said Sunday’s results made her Frente de Todos — Front of All — party “happy and optimistic.”

“But not only because we won an election. This is not a soccer game. Many Argentines understood and understand that things must change in the Republic of Argentina because as we are not living well, we are not OK,” she said.

The possibility that Cristina Fernández could return to power – if only as vice president – stunned markets.

Grupo Financiero Galicia, a century-old financial services company in Buenos Aires with a market capitalization of $2.5 billion, plunged 60%. All banks were hit hard, but so were companies that do construction or provide infrastructure services.

The value of Loma Negra, an industrial services company that makes cement and provides railroad transportation services, tumbled 60% as well. More than 40% of the existing worth of the energy company Transportadora de Gas del Sur disappeared.

Matías Carugati, chief economist for Management & Fit, said the victory of the Fernández team would put “sustained” pressure on the exchange rate and stocks due to the prospect that the South American’s recent less state-interventionist course could be reversed.

Macri’s election in 2015 marked the first time in a more than a decade that Argentina’s center-right opposition had unseated the center-left Peronist movement to which Cristina Fernández belongs.

At the time, his victory appeared to signal an end to his rival’s rule, but he conceded that Sunday’s results put him on the defensive.

“This is an election where Argentina has to determine whether it continues on a path of transformation, of deepening democracy, of insertion into the world, of improvement and development — or returns to an authoritarian populist model that has failed in all places where it has been implemented,” he said. </s> Millionaires, construction and finance companies are among the primary donors supporting the Argentine President Mauricio Macri coalition reelection campaign.

Legislation enacted just two months ahead of the Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primary Elections (STEP) has opened the floor for sponsoring opportunities from legal, privately-owned entities.

The new law, a first for Argentina, came just in time for the primary elections and allows private donations of up to 4.5 million pesos. Lawmakers say it is among several legislations being introduced for transparency, by which it can avoid the scandals experienced during the Buenos Aires elections in 2015 and 2017.

However, as the elections near a close, data shows Macri’s Buenos Aires governmental representative Maria Eugenia Vidal’s campaign’s winnings amount to around ARS$6 million (US$134,820), gained by affluent admirers of the Argentine President Mauricio Macri coalition, Together for Change (Cambiemos.)

Among the most generous are Maxinta SA, a currency exchange company in the city; Jorge Milne, former bank president of the Banco Patagonia; Daniel Diego Van Lierde, president of the mining company Caleras San Juan.

So far, no formal complaints about irregularities with campaign contributions has been filed as of yet, although — with nine days left in the race, critics believe it could still transpire. According to statistics, only one percent of donations are formally reported to authorities, Pagina 12 said. The rest are usually left undeclared. </s> Presidential candidate Alberto Fernandez addresses supporters at the “Frente de Todos” party headquarters after primary elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019. The “Frente de Todos” presidential ticket with former President Cristina Fernández emerged as the strongest vote-getter in Argentina’s primary elections Sunday, indicating conservative President Mauricio Macri will face an uphill battle going into general elections in October. (AP Photo/Sebastian Pani)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentine stocks and currency plummeted on Monday after Argentine President Mauricio Macri was snubbed by voters who appeared to hand a resounding primary victory to a populist ticket with his predecessor, Cristina Fernández.

The preliminary results from Sunday’s voting suggest the conservative Macri will face an uphill battle going into general elections in October and gives the populists who governed Argentina for most of the past two decades a strong chance of returning to power.

About a third of the Argentinian companies that trade in U.S. markets lost half of their value Monday, but losses were extreme across the board.

With 88% of polling stations tallied early Monday, official results gave the presidential slate headed by Alberto Fernández and his vice presidential running mate, Cristina Fernández, about 47% of the votes in a primary vote featuring 10 candidates. Macri and his running mate, Miguel Ángel Pichetto, had 32% — a wide margin that revealed the considerable depth of Macri’s weakness, potentially positioning the Fernández team to win in the first round of a general election voting on Oct. 27.

To be elected president in the first round, candidates need to finish with at least 45% of the votes or have 40% and a greater than 10-point advantage over the nearest rival. If no candidate wins outright in October, there will be a November runoff.

“We’ve had a bad election and that obligates us to redouble our efforts so that in October we will continue with change,” Macri said in a late-night address. “I think it is very important a dialogue continues in this country, and that we continue explaining to the world what it is we want.”

Former Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna trailed far behind the two front-running slates with 8.4% of the votes, which is still potentially enough support to give him a kingmaker role in the fall.

The election functioned largely as a poll for the October vote. All of the parties already had their candidates chosen and the only practical result was to eliminate a few minor parties that got less than 1.5% of the overall votes from upcoming general election.

The pro-business Macri has the support of financial markets and Washington, but has lost popularity amid a deep economic crisis that drove the inflation rate to nearly 50% last year and slashed Argentines’ purchasing power. He says he is taking the necessary, painful steps to get the economy going after 12 years of leftist populism under Cristina Fernández and her predecessor and late husband, Nestor Kirchner.

But the electorate issued a resounding rejection of his handling of the economic situation — and a recent lending package from the International Monetary Fund that totaled upward of $55 billion. Most Argentines blame the IMF for encouraging policies that led to the country’s worst economic crisis in 2001, which resulted in one of every five Argentines being unemployed and millions sliding into poverty.

“It’s clear that Macri’s weakest point is the management of the economy, despite the fact that it has improved in the last three months,” said Mariel Fornoni, director of the political consultancy Management & Fit.

The Fernández ticket, whose two members are not related, contends Macri must be defeated so they can fight the poverty and homelessness that they blame on his policies.

“We always fixed problems that others generated. We are going to do it once again,” said Alberto Fernández, who was Cristina Fernández’s chief of staff during her initial term in 2007-2011.

Cristina Fernández is currently facing a series of trials for corruption during her 2007-2015 administration. She denies the allegations.

In a recorded message from the southern province of Santa Cruz, she said Sunday’s results made her Frente de Todos — Front of All — party “happy and optimistic.”

“But not only because we won an election — This is not a soccer game. Many Argentines understood and understand that things must change in the Republic of Argentina because as we are not living well, we are not OK,” she said.

The possibility that Cristina Fernández could return to power stunned markets.

Grupo Financiero Galicia, a century-old financial services company in Buenos Aires with a market capitalization of $2.5 billion, plunged 60%. All banks were hit hard, but so were companies that do construction or provide vital infrastructure services.

The value of Loma Negra, an industrial services company that makes cement and provides railroad transportation services, tumbled 60% as well. More than 40% of the existing worth of the energy company Transportadora de Gas del Sur disappeared.

Matías Carugati, chief economist for Management & Fit, said the victory of the Fernández team would put “sustained” pressure on the exchange rate and stocks due to the prospect that the South American’s recent free, less state-interventionist course could be reversed.

Macri’s election in 2015 marked the first time in a more than a decade that Argentina’s center-right opposition had unseated the center-left Peronist movement to which Cristina Fernández belongs.

At the time, his victory appeared to signal a clear end to his rival’s rule, but he conceded that Sunday’s results put him on the defensive.

“This is an election where Argentina has to determine whether it continues on a path of transformation, of deepening democracy, of insertion into the world, of improvement and development — or returns to an authoritarian populist model that has failed in all places where it has been implemented,” he said. </s> New Delhi: Former Argentine president Fernando de la Rua has died. He was 81, reported news agency AFP quoting President of Argentina Mauricio Macri.

The former President had attracted voters as he was considered an honest statesman. However, he had left the country in its worst economic crisis. The news of his death has been officially confirmed by the Argentine government. Fernando De la Rúa is survived by his wife Inés Pertiné and his three sons namely Antonio, Fernando and Agustina.

Meanwhile, President Mauricio Macri expressed his condolences in a tweet on Tuesday which said, “His democratic trajectory deserves the recognition of all Argentines.”

According to Telam state news agency, De la Rúa died of cardiac and other health complications. The former Argentine president served from 1999 to December 2001. During his presidential term, Argentina had plunged into a crisis which caused violent riots across the country.

De la Rúa is infamously known for escaping the violent protests with the aid of a helicopter from the rooftop of the pink presidential palace. The protests erupted against his handling of the crisis. Notably, the riots claimed the lives of dozens of people across Argentina. </s> The political formula including ex-President Cristina Fernandez has an advantage of up to 5 points over the right-wing candidates.

With nine days to go before the primary presidential elections in Argentina, Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Fernandez have an advantage of 5 percentage points over Mauricio Macri and Miguel Angel Picheto, according to "practically all the main opinion companies."

"The difference ranges from four to five points in surveys conducted by phone; however, the difference is greater in surveys conducted in person," Pagina 12 reported.

According to the Spanish company Celag, the only pollster that carried out two polls directly at people's homes, Fernandez has 42.5 percent of the preferences and Macri 33.5 percent of the intention to vote.

“Face-to-face surveys have greater access to the young people and the most humble classes,” Pagina 12 commented and explained that Argentine poor families do not have much access to landlines or cell phones.

“It is true that phone surveys usually have correction factors to mathematically straighten those difficulties; however, such correction depends a lot on each consultant's skills.”

Seen from a more conservative perspective, which is what the mainstream media want to prevail, the average of all polls shows that voting intention favors Fernandez with 37.8 percent and Macri with 35.2 percent.

During the crisis, in one year, Macri increased his assets by 50 percent. In 2017 he declared a patrimony of 99 million pesos [US$2.2 million]. In 2018 his assets increased to almost 152 million pesos [US$3.3 million], without counting the famous 'blind trust'."

These opinion polls were carried out before Argentina knew that President Macri increased his assets by more than 50 percent in the last year, an expansion which does not takes into account the money he included in "the blind trust", a financial instrument whose magnitude could only be known six months after he leaves office.​​​

Meanwhile, what is already known is that the righ-wing President became a debt holder in the middle of the budget crisis of the Argentine state.

"In October 2018 Macri bought Argentine debt bonds for more than 94 million pesos [US$2.2 million]," El Clarin, a conservative media, revealed.

The loss of popularity of President Macri was evident again nine days before the primary elections. On Friday, very few people concentrated outside the Argentinean official residence to accompany the President in his campaign.

"This morning we arrived in Buenos Aires and we came to support the President," Francisco Bustos, who traveled from Tucuman to be in a rally in which less than 100 people participated, said.

“The only mass demonstration in favor of Macri occurred in April 2017 during his tenure,” recalled EFE.

From Saturday on, Argentine polling companies are prohibited from publishing or disseminating presidential electoral forecasts. </s> BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine voters soundly rejected President Mauricio Macri’s austere economic policies in primary elections on Sunday, raising serious questions about his chances of re-election in October, early official results showed.

A coalition backing opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez - whose running mate is former president Cristina Fernandez - led by a wider-than-expected 14 percentage points with 47.1% of votes, with fourth-fifths of ballots counted.

On Sunday, Macri told supporters the primary vote was a “bad election” for his coalition ahead of the official results.

“Recognizing that we have had a bad election, that forces us, starting tomorrow, to redouble our efforts so that in October we will get the support that is needed to continue the change,” Macri said.

“This is something that nobody expected. Nobody had these numbers. All the pollsters have failed.”

Analysts predict a slide in Argentine stock and bond prices when financial markets open on Monday if Fernandez records a lead of more than five to six percentage points - slightly more than the level predicted in recent opinion polls.

There could be an even stronger degree of market volatility if final results show that Fernandez has enough support to clinch the presidency in October’s first round, analysts said.

In order to win the presidency outright, a candidate needs at least 45% of the vote or 40% and a difference of 10 percentage points over the second-place runner. If there is no clear winner, voters will return for a run-off on Nov. 24.

Argentina’s main political parties have already chosen their presidential nominees, allowing the primary to serve as the first concrete measure of voter sentiment after opinion polls showed a narrow margin between Macri and Fernandez.

Voters were given a stark choice, stay the course of painful austerity measures under Macri or a return to interventionist economics.

Fernandez has promised access to free medicines for retirees and better wages for workers while hammering Macri for the uptick in poverty and unemployment.

Re-electing Macri would mean seeing through painful cuts in public spending as part of the $57 billion standby agreement he negotiated with the International Monetary Fund last year.

Yet Macri is hoping some recent glimmers of economic revival are enough to encourage voters to stick with his free-markets reform agenda despite a painful recession and 55% inflation. </s> BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Former Argentine President Fernando De la Rúa, who attracted voters with his image as an honest statesman and later left the country plunged into its worst economic crisis, has died. He was 81.

The death was confirmed by the Argentine government. President Mauricio Macri expressed his condolences, saying on Twitter: “His democratic trajectory deserves the recognition of all Argentines.”

De la Rúa served from 1999 to December 2001 when he infamously escaped by helicopter from the rooftop of the pink presidential palace. It came after days of violent protests against his handling of the crisis amid rioting that caused dozens of deaths across Argentina.

The Telam state news agency said he died of cardiac and other complications. </s> • The Central Bank of Argentina raised its benchmark interest rate to 60%.
• On Wednesday, Argentine President Mauricio Macri said he has asked the International Monetary Fund to speed up bailout payments to the country.
• Watch the Argentine peso in real time here.

Argentina's central bank hiked rates by 15 percentage points to 60% on Thursday after the peso continued to slide despite the country already having the highest borrowing rates in the world.

The Central Bank of Argentina raised its benchmark interest rate up from 45% after the peso slid more than 8% to fresh lows. It is the worst-performing emerging market currency of 2018.

The rate hike comes as the International Monetary Fund, which has extended Argentina the largest credit line in its history, considers speeding up bailout payments to the country. Argentine President Mauricio Macri said on Wednesday he had requested IMF do so in order to "eliminate any uncertainty that was created before the worsening of the international outlook."

As part of the three-year standby agreement, the government has received $15 billion so far and was poised to get an additional $3 billion next month.

Citing a ballooning debt burden and a weakening peso, the rating agency Moody's on Tuesday cut its growth forecast for Argentina. It estimates gross domestic product will contract by 1% next year, compared with previous expectations for a 3% expansion. </s> Former Argentine President Fernando de la Rua died on Tuesday in Buenos Aires, a few hours after being hospitalized, President Mauricio Macri said. He was 81.

"I am saddened by the death of ex-President Fernando de la Rua. His commitment to democracy deserves the recognition of all Argentines. We are with his family at this time," Macri said in a Twitter post.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri receives the U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who expresses full support from the U.S. for his re-election in the upcoming Argentine elections.