Mauricio Macri, Mayor of Buenos Aires:
Local politician with national ambitions
By Andrew Stevens, Deputy Editor

26 July 2007: The mayor of the Argentinean federal capital Buenos Aires represents both a sea change in the nation’s recent turbulent political history and a populist touch to the problems which have blighted the city in spite of continuous economic growth and stability. The conservative businessman first ran for mayor in 2003 following his stint as president of one of the country’s best-known football teams, eventually securing election to Congress in 2005 and as mayor in July 2007.

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Born in the city of Tandil, situated in the exterior of Buenos Aires province, in 1961, Macri hails from one of Argentina’s wealthiest families. Having attended the Catholic University of Argentina, where he received a degree in civil engineering, followed by Columbia Business School and Wharton Business School in the US, Macri obtained a number of senior management positions within his father’s companies, before attaining widespread recognition as president of the Boca Juniors football team in 1995.

In 2003 Macri founded the right-leaning Commitment to Change party as a vehicle for his own political ambitions, contesting the Buenos Aires mayoral election that year. In that election, Macri won the first round, taking 47% of the vote, but lost in the run-off to incumbent mayor Anibal Barra of the centre-left Front for a Country in Solidarity.

Following the economic crises of 2001 and 2002, 2003 proved a landmark year in Argentinean politics, with the victory by default of Peronist Néstor Kirchner in the discredited presidential election of that year following frontrunner Carlos Menem’s withdrawal from the race. Kirchner had backed Peronist ally Barra for the mayoralty in the capital but the fall-out from the 194 deaths in the República Cromagnon nightclub fire of December 2004 led to the mayor’s impeachment following revelations concerning weak city fire inspections of the premises, Barra having initially blamed the federal authorities for the blaze.

Barra was succeeded as mayor by his vice mayor, Jorge Telerman. During this period, Commitment to Change, in alliance with other parties of the Argentinean right as ‘Republican Proposal’, won several seats in the federal Congress, with Macri entering the lower chamber in 2005. Macri’s opponents charge that he has the worst attendance record in the Congress, which he does not deny but counters that the legislature “lacks debate”.

In the 2007 mayoral election, Macri again took the majority of votes in the first round with 46% of the vote but faced a run-off against the government-backed candidate, education minister and socialist academic Daniel Filmus. Three weeks later however, Macri secured election with 60% of the vote and will take office as mayor later this year. Macri’s victory was perceived as a blow for the re-election ambitions of President Kirchner, who has since withdrawn from the race and will instead focus on the foundation of a new party to retain office for the Peronist wing, possibly under his wife Senator Cristina Kirchner’s candidacy. This therefore places Macri in something of a kingmaker role concerning the selection of presidential challenger of the right, with the October election falling before his taking office as mayor in December 2007.