Argentina president-elect pledges radical policy changes in shift to right
Hours after Argentina’s political landscape underwent a tectonic rightward shift, president-elect Mauricio Macri announced a series of radical changes that will realign his country’s place in the world.
Following Sunday night’s narrow election victory that marked the first change of government in 12 years, Macri said he would tear up Argentina’s memorandum of understanding with Iran, seek Venezuela’s exclusion from the regional free trade association Mercosur and ease away from a fixed exchange rate with the dollar.
This is the “change of an era”, he declared at a press conference that was itself a sign of greater openness compared to the largely one-way media approach of his leftist predecessor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. “We need to be in the world.”
Not seen as a serious contender during the first round of the campaign, Macri ultimately forced a runoff against Fernández’s hand-picked candidate Daniel Scioli and then won Sunday’s decider with 51.4% of the vote – less than three points ahead of his rival.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/argentina-president-elect-mauricio-macri-iran-venezuela