He tried to be president of Argentina in 2015 outside the scope of Peronism, but to no avail. On Sunday, November 19, Sergio Massa, the current Minister of Economy, will face Javier Miley for the presidency of the country.

Who is Sergio Massa?

Sergio Massa is the third partner in the current government coalition, Front for All, which came to power in 2019 with Alberto Fernandez as president and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as vice-president, and who knew how to be, first, a reliable official. And then his fierce opponent.

He is a 51-year-old lawyer and has two children with his wife Malena Galmarini, the current owner of the state water and sanitation company (AYSA) that operates in the city of Buenos Aires and its surroundings.

His path in politics began in the Union of the Democratic Center, UCeDé, a right-wing group led by Álvaro Sogaray, which in the 1990s, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, joined Peronism. Massa would do the same and in 1999 would be elected regional deputy. Some figures from former UCeDé who were even part of Menem’s government now support the candidacy of right-wing liberal Javier Maile. But Massa remained within Peronism.

Step by Step

In 2002, with the arrival of Peronist Eduardo Duhalde as interim president after the 2001 crisis, Massa was appointed head of the National Social Security Administration (ANS), the organization that manages one of the state’s main budgets.

He remained in this position until 2007, throughout the presidency of Néstor Kirchner, although he was elected a national deputy for the first time in 2005, already in the ranks of Kirchnerism, but resigned from this position in his favor. Continue guiding people. .

In 2007, he was elected mayor of Tigre, a party in the north of Greater Buenos Aires, but remained there for less than 8 months. He requested a leave of absence, and in July 2008 took over as chief of staff to then-President Cristina Kirchner, following the resignation of Alberto Fernández, who had held the position since Néstor Kirchner’s accession to the presidency in 2003.

Massa will be chief of staff for just under a year. In June 2009, he joined, in third place, the list of national representatives headed by former President Kirchner in the province of Buenos Aires. Massa was one of the so-called “certificate” candidates, who, although elected, had no intention of holding office, but had the ability to attract votes, as happened in his case.

That list lost to the list led by businessman Francisco de Narvaez, and a few days later Massa resigned as chief of staff and returned to the mayor of Tigre. In 2011, under the umbrella of the Kirchnerian doctrine, he will be re-elected as mayor with more than 70% of the votes.

Since then, disagreements with Kirchnerism deepened until he once again competed for a deputy position in the 2013 elections, but this time on his own space, the Frente Renovador, defeating then-president Martin Insorralde’s candidate.

It seemed that his break with the Kirchnerism had no turning back, and led to his running for president in 2015 as an opposition candidate. His candidacy ended up splitting the Peronist vote, and Mauricio Macri would end up winning that presidential election in a runoff against the official nominee, Daniele Scioli.

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