The main candidates for national deputies for the City of Buenos Aires met this Wednesday to star in the first television debate, heading to the legislative elections on November 14.

The debate was on the TN program "A dos voces" with the participation of María Eugenia Vidal (Together for Change), Leandro Santoro (Front of All), Javier Milei (Avanza Libertad) and Myriam Bregman (Left Front).

The call for the exchange of ideas was based on three large thematic blocks, established by the production of the program: institutional quality, security and justice; health policy in pandemic; and economy, education and work.

In the open, simultaneous and mandatory primaries (PASO) on September 12, Vidal, according to the data from the definitive scrutiny, obtained 32.98% of the total, and Juntos por el Cambio also added the votes of Ricardo López Murphy (11.20%) and Adolfo Rubinstein (3.98%), totaling 48.17% of the total for the opposition space.

Leandro Santoro, from the Frente de Todos, received 24.71% of the votes, while Javier Milei, from Avanza Libertad, obtained 13.70%.

Myriam Bregman, from "Unidad de la Izquierda", obtained 5.36% of the total electorate, while Luis Zamora, from Autodeterminación y Libertad, reached 2.64% of the total.

The preview of the debate

The first to arrive was the candidate of Avanza Libertad, Javier Milei. The economist arrived with a yellow folder in hand, a black suit and tie at tone, hair cut and according to what he said, he was made up beforehand with products that did not cause allergies to his skin. He was accompanied by his sister, Karina , who assured that his brother was "very diligent and obedient."

The second to arrive was Myriam Bregman, the candidate for the Left Front and Workers-Unity who arrived accompanied by her fellow militants Christian “Chipi” Castillo and Nicolás Del Caño, current national deputy for that space.

The legislator wore jeans and a green jacket, and wore a mask with the legend “Where is Tehuel?”, alluding to the 21-year-old trans youth who disappeared in the town of Alejandro Korn. "We're still looking for him," she remarked.

In addition, in the official's dressing room there were posters with different requests: “Comprehensive Sexual Education Law (ESI)”, “Implementation of the Wetlands Law now”, “Legalization of the Marijuana Law”, “No to towers in the neighborhoods” and “Front labeling”

In return, the candidate of Together for Change and winner of the PASO, María Eugenia Vidal, wore a light blue jacket and black pants just like her shirt. The former Buenos Aires governor, who almost tripped at the entrance, arrived accompanied by her partner, the journalist Enrique Sacco.

The candidate of the ruling party, Leandro Santoro arrived at the studios with a relaxed style, dressed with black buttons on a light blue shirt. He chose not to wear a tie and a casual hairstyle. At the door of his dressing room, only "Everyone" could be read as the name of the space.

In parallel, the Community managers of María Eugenia Vidal and Leandro Santoro were tweeting videos of the debate, concepts and even data.

Crossroads due to the pandemic

The candidate for Buenos Aires national deputy of the Frente de Todos (FdT) Leandro Santoro warned that "nobody had a manual" on "how to solve" the coronavirus pandemic but stressed that in Argentina "nobody lacked an intensive care bed "; the one from La Libertad Avanza, Javier Milei, questioned the management of the "caste" of the health emergency; the JxC candidate María Eugenia Vidal defended the management of the local government and criticized that of the national government and the leftist candidate Myriam Bregman vindicated the health workers.

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During the block of the debate of applicants dedicated to "Health Policy in a Pandemic", Santoro affirmed that the government of Alberto Fernández "made an enormous effort to guarantee" the attention of the health system that "had left macrismo destroyed". "Does anyone remember any public policy of the City to help people in the pandemic?" asked the FdT candidate.

For her part, the JxC Vidal candidate countered that in the city of Buenos Aires appointments were given to get vaccinated and in the national government "officials and militants were vaccinated beforehand." "In the City we won 45 days of classes by going to the Supreme Court; in the national government there was a Minister of Education and a President who campaigned for the closure of schools."

Meanwhile, Milei stated that "if Argentina had done things like a mediocre country, instead of 117 thousand deaths it would have had 25 thousand", but regretted that "the caste did not want to lose its privileges". "The strategy that we all knew that we had to carry out, in the first stage, was that of massive tests, but this government, for not stopping stealing, decided to sentence thousands of Argentines to death," denounced the right-wing leader.

In her turn, the candidate of the Left Front and the Workers (FIT) Bregman pointed out that "those who killed the fight against Covid were the health workers", for which she demanded the "pass to a professional plant of the nurses". "They can't talk about health treating the workers of this City like this," Bregman emphasized.

Santoro, in turn, assessed that "nobody had a manual on how to solve" the pandemic, although "nevertheless, nobody lacked an intensive care bed and a respirator", which he contrasted with the purchase of more of 5 million chinstraps made by the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, with an "extra price" of up to "3 thousand pesos each".

Debt and the economy

Leandro Santoro maintained that during the government of Mauricio Macri "there was a dastardly process of taking on debt for capital flight, where debt for 100 billion dollars was taken and enabled the flight for USD 80 billion", because "there is a business concept" where "a 3,000% increase in public utility rates" was registered.

For her part, the candidate of Together for Change, María Eugenia Vidal, pointed out that the economy "is worse than in 2019, with more poverty, without work and with a country more indebted", although she considered that "there is a departure" with "an agreement of basic things. Vidal announced that in Congress he will not vote for "new taxes or increases in existing ones", and considered that "the country has to export, open up its economy and not issue" pesos.

The candidate of La Libertad Avanza, Javier Milei, pointed to "the caste model" in which "they all adhere to an idea of ​​'where there is a need there is a right,' but the needs are infinite and if they create someone has to pay for a right and resources are finite and lead to fiscal crises". According to Milei, "Argentina does not stop falling, because it is the model of fiscal inconsistency, with an increasingly large State", in which "since 1950, every two years one has a crisis; and the only ones that it favored were the caste policy".

Myriam Bregman, from the Left and Workers Front (FIT), pointed out that "all the right wing says that the fewer rights workers have, the more work there will be." And she assured that "this is not the case, it already happened in the '90s, with 20% unemployment." He disapproved of the "liberal myth and inflation" by expressing that in the country "for four years there has been a fall in wages and there is 50% inflation" annually, and asked that salaries and pensions "rise monthly according to inflation ".

The moment of the Chicanas

If something managed to break what, after the hour of debate in the Constitution study, had already settled as a monotony of saying, it was a new modality that was proposed for the last block. There the candidates could choose another to exchange questions and answers. The segment with the most interesting and even revealing moments of the debate then took place.

For having obtained the most votes in the PASO, and according to the previous rules, Vidal was the first to choose "opponent", and as expected, she pointed to Santoro. She returned to the media dart with which she chose to begin her performance, that of the tweet by the Minister of Security Aníbal Fernández against the cartoonist Nik. "I want to make a first proposal: that all the candidates ask him to resign. He crossed a limit that cannot be accepted," the candidate of Together for Change had begun, in "hard" mode, and in parallel his advisers tweeted.

He repeated it in the last segment, and Santoro took the opportunity to remind him that Mauricio Macri spied on Santilli's children and members of his own party, including Vidal. "That's much more fucked up than sending the wrong tweet, how can you allow it?" he asked. "As I am a complainant and I know the file, I know that there is no element to involve Mauricio Macri," the former governor came out to defend emphatically.

After pronouncing the words "caste" and "fallacy" fifty times, Milei was forced by Bregman in the following shift to speak out against abortion, even if it is "free", as well as legal and free. And he finished showing himself outside of any previous agreement and of any shared rule when he, instead of directing her question towards the other candidate, he raised it "to the Argentine people, because I do not argue with the caste". "This is not what was agreed," the drivers warned him. "It is striking that someone who talks about 'the political caste' has worked for a genocide like Bussi, and has the worst of the militarist caste on his list," Bregman said. It also forced him then to justify his work as an adviser to the Tucuman repressor because "the system of democracy allowed it, and if it was wrong, it is because it failed."

Luis Zamora protests

Zamora did not participate. "We propose another debate of CABA candidates, since the TN channel maintains its position of preventing us from participating," Zamora said in a statement.

"Faced with the right that we have won by the votes in the PASO, TN undemocratically insists on supporting Marcelo Bonelli as one of the moderators of the debate despite our legitimate questioning consistently maintained for more than ten years by an operation slanderous statement that he made against members of Self-Determination and Freedom and of which he never retracted," said the leftist candidate.

Debate of the Buenos Aires candidates

Likewise, one week after the debate of the candidates for national deputies for the Federal Capital it will be the turn of the Buenos Aires contenders, who will have their debate, also in TN, on October 20.

There will be Victoria Tolosa Paz (Front of All), Diego Santilli (Together), Nicolás del Caño (Left Front), José Luis Espert (Avanza Libertad), Florencio Randazzo (Vamos con Vos) and Cynthia Hotton (Front More Values).