Sports / Soccer
Soccer boss elected Buenos Aires mayor
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-06-25 09:16
A millionaire soccer boss from Argentina's center-right opposition was
elected mayor of Buenos Aires in a run-off vote on Sunday, defeating a
candidate backed by President Nestor Kirchner.
With more than 73 percent of the ballots counted, 60.5 percent of voters
supported Mauricio Macri, a congressman and president of the country's
most popular soccer club, while 39.5 percent backed Daniel Filmus,
Kirchner's education minister.
"Change won in Buenos Aires today," Macri told a throng of cheering
supporters. "It's a change that proposes a different kind of politics,
different values."
Macri's victory catapults a leading opposition figure into one of the
country's key political posts, dealing a blow to the Argentine leader
ahead of this year's presidential election.
Highly popular, Kirchner had waded into the contest, hoping to broaden
his power base.
Analysts say the win will likely anoint Macri as the leader of a
fractured opposition struggling to gain ground on the center-left
president in the October 28 presidential race.
"This affirms Macri as the figurehead of the opposition," Joaquin Morales
Sola, a political columnist at the Buenos Aires daily La Nacion, said in
televised comments.
Kirchner has dominated Argentine politics since taking office in 2003,
consolidating power as he won credit for engineering the country's
economic recovery.
BIG LEADS
Public opinion surveys show Kirchner and his wife, a senator, holding
substantial leads in the presidential race, with either expected to win
easily. Neither has said if they will run, but Kirchner frequently hints
his wife may do so.
Macri was widely seen as a potential candidate in the presidential
election before he jumped into the mayor's race. He has hinted it might
be a first step toward a 2011 presidential candidacy.
Kirchner hand-picked Filmus to compete in the race in Buenos Aires, home
to some 2.8 million Argentines and an independent-minded electorate that
frequently votes against national trends.
Macri, 48, hails from one of the country's wealthiest and most
controversial families. His father, business tycoon Franco Macri, is one
of Argentina's richest men whose businesses flourished during the 1990s
under former President Carlos Menem.
Kirchner, who blames Argentina's 2001-2002 economic crisis on neo-liberal
economic policies implemented during the Menem years, had publicly warned
a Macri victory could mark a return of Menem's policies.
In the final days of the campaign, Macri got a public relations boost
from his role as president of the Boca Juniors club, where soccer great
Diego Maradona once starred.
On Wednesday, Boca won Latin America's Copa Libertadores tournament, the
equivalent of Europe's Champions League championship.
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