Right wins Buenos Aires mayoral election by narrow margin
Last edited Sun Jul 19, 2015, 09:08 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: Fox News Latino
The Buenos Aires mayoral candidate for the conservative Republican Proposal (PRO), Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, eked out a victory in the election runoff on Sunday by less than 3 percentage points, according to the official vote count.
With 91.17% of the precincts reporting, Rodríguez Larreta, who has headed the capital government's cabinet since late 2007, garnered 51.37% of the votes, to the 48.63% captured by Martín Lousteau, the candidate of the center-left ECO party.
According to the official figures, turnout was 69.57%, and 5.08% of the deposited ballots were blank.
In the first electoral round, held on July 5, Rodríguez Larreta had garnered a plurality of 44.7%; but 50% was needed to avoid a runoff.
Lousteau - who had served as economy minister in 2007-08 during President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's first term, although he is now an opponent of the administration - had received 25% of the votes in the first round.
Some 2.5 million people were registered to vote in the Argentine capital, making it the country's fourth-largest electoral district.
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2015/07/19/right-wins-buenos-aires-mayoral-election-by-narrow-margin/
The closest thing in Argentina to the GOP, Rodríguez Larreta's PRO was once again able to capitalize on many Buenos Aires voters' hatred for brown-skinned immigrants - though less so than his predecessor Macri, since he appears to have squeaked by with a 3% difference over the centrist Lousteau.
This, of course, assuming there was no foul play with Macri's new e-voting machines (http://www.democraticunderground.com/110841993).
Lousteau won in 9 out of 15 districts; but large margins in the upscale 2nd, 13th, and 14th districts clinched a win for Rodríguez Larreta.
Rodríguez Larreta will inherit a difficult legacy from the CIA-supported Macri (a presidential hopeful and his current boss). These include:
* A 5-fold jump in the city's formerly low debt levels (from $500 million in 2007 to $2.5 billion today)
* Record property taxes (10-fold jump since 2007, more than doubling in real terms) and fares
* Runaway spending on padded contracts for privatized services ($500 million a year, with costs typically three times what other government bodies pay for similar items or services)
* Misallocation rates of 60% on budgets for public health and 90% on public education (much of it going to padded contracts, private school subsidies, and city advertising)
* Record number of potholes despite Macri's "zero pothole" promise (doubling from 20,000 in 2007 to 40,000 today)
* And worst of all a record number of residents in shantytowns (spending on public housing -a municipal responsibility- has virtually stopped since 2007).
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