Last Friday, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez announced that he would not seek reelection in October, leaving the country’s already wide-open presidential race even more uncertain. To be sure, Fernandez was not even a safe bet to win the nomination of his own Justicialist Party, the leading formation of Argentina’s broader Peronist coalition. Inflation in the country hovers around 100 percent, with the poverty rate at 39 percent. Several people I spoke with on a recent two-week visit to the country expressed some bewilderment that there hasn’t been a mass social uprising of the kind Argentina is known for, though the close ties between the Peronists and Argentina’s labor unions and progressive civil society could be one explanation. In any event, Fernandez’s announcement was not much of a surprise.
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