The project aims to eliminate primaries, change campaign financing and implement a clean record
The president of Argentina, Javier Mileyannounced this Tuesday (21) that will send the electoral reform proposal to Congress on Wednesday (22). The project seeks eliminate the Argentine primaries, change campaign financing and implement the clean record mechanism.
“Impunity is over. The farce is over. Long live freedom, damn it,” said the Argentine president in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
According to the newspaper The Nationthe Argentine electoral reform gained more defined contours on Friday (17), during one of the last meetings of the political committee of the Milei government. At the meeting, the central points of the proposal. Among them, the so-called “fresh start” policymechanism that allows parties in crisis to reorganize under new acronymswhich opposition blocs demand as a condition for supporting the reform.
In relation to the clean record mechanism, the project defends that individuals who are “excluded from the electoral register due to current legal provisions”. Thus, people prosecuted by genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and human rights violationsamong other acts, cannot be candidates, according to The Nation.
According to information from the Argentine newspaper, the most controversial point of reform is the future of open primaries, simultaneous and mandatory preliminary elections of parties, the so-called PASO.
Several groups resist the proposal to abolish the mechanism. Amid the internal fragmentation of the parties, many recognize that primaries would be necessary to define their candidates before facing the ruling party in the 2027 elections. Therefore, the Executive considered it unlikely to gather the necessary majority to extinguish the mechanism.
Before the impasseMilei’s political team decided to include the “fresh start” proposal in the reform project as a negotiating currency. The objective is to convince the most resistant blocks to at least analyze the proposal and not simply shelve it, as they did on previous occasions. It was also decided that the project will first be sent to the Argentine Senate, a chamber considered more favorable to building the majorities necessary for approval.
Reformed by Milei
The Argentine president announced last month that he intended to boost 90 structural reforms in 2026 with the aim of “redesign the institutional architecture” of the country “for the next 50 years”. The statement was made during the Chief Executive’s annual address to Congress.
Milei stated that he would send it to Parliament proposed changes in areas such as economy, tax system, penal code, electoral system, education, justice and defenseamong others. According to him, the measures continue what he classified as a cycle of transformations started after his inauguration, in 2023.
The president also highlighted what he called “nine uninterrupted months of structural reforms” and stated that the initiatives are part of the construction of a “new Argentina”.
