Rodriguez Larreta wins runoff, will succeed Macri as Buenos Aires mayor.

July 19, 2015
Buenos Aires Herald

Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, running on Macri's PRO ticket, today won the Buenos Aires city mayoral elections against ECO's Martín Lousteau.

The difference between both candidates is lower than in the first round but enough to succeed Mauricio Macri. With this result, the third period of Macri’s PRO ahead of the city government will begin and will last until 2019.

According to the information released by the Superior Justice Court (TSJ), by 4pm, 60 percent of those eligible to vote had cast their ballot. On July 5 a total of 73 percent had voted when polls closed in the first round.

Rodríguez Larreta, Macri’s Cabinet Chief, has been ahead in the polls ever since he overcame the challenge from Senator Gabriela Michetti to win the PRO primaries, paving the way for the first transition from an elected PRO official to another one in a City that has been governed by the party since 2007.

Despite the PRO’s high approval ratings, Larreta failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round of voting on July 5 and will face off against Martín Lousteau of the ECO coalition, a grouping made up of offshoots of the dismembered UNEN. Ironically, the coalition fell apart over disputes over a national-level alliance with the PRO, a move spearheaded by the Radical Party (UCR) and the Civic Coalition (CC) and resisted by the Socialist Party (PS) and the more leftist parties in the defunct coalition. The UCR in the City was at the heart of Lousteau’s bid.

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/194350/rodriguez-larreta-wins-runoff-will-succeed-macri-as-city-mayor
__________________________________

Rodríguez Larreta's PRO was once again able to capitalize on most 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).

Whoever wins, he'll inherit a difficult legacy from the CIA-supported Macri (Rodríguez Larreta's 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).