Mauricio Macri takes office next month as the first non-Peronist President of Argentina in nearly 15 years. But the road ahead for the former mayor of Buenos Aires will be a tough one, especially in the context of his campaign pledge to reform Argentina. At stake on the fiscal front are severe challenges, ranging from ending currency controls to dwindling foreign reserves, a growing fiscal deficit, rampant inflation and rising unemployment — issues Macri mostly inherits from his predecessor Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s eight-year rule. While South American — and global — markets have already built expectations bordering on euphoria, following the business-friendly Macri’s victory, the reality looks much more mundane.
For starters, as the saying goes in Argentina, the only thing worse than a Peronist in power is a Peronist in the opposition. The fact that Argentina has had only three non-Peronist presidents in the last 50 years provides one indication of how hard it will be for Macri to prove that the country can be successfully governed by policies that differ, in this instance, from the controversial world of ‘Kirchnerismo’ — the brand of politics named after Cristina and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner. Dialogue instead of division, consensus instead of conflict and striking a balance between funding social projects and private sector growth could provide Macri’s presidency with that healing touch the Argentinian public seems to be clamouring for after years of dramatic sound and fury, signifying mostly nothing — except economic gloom.
