The presidential debate, a rare practice since 1983

Although this is a long-standing tradition in the world, the presidential debate has hardly taken place in Argentina since the democratic resumption of 1983, until a law passed in 2016 fixed its obligation on the following the civil initiative put in place for the national elections of the year. previous

The first debate following the restoration of democracy took place in 1984, when the then president, Raúl Alfonsín, convened a plebiscite on the conflict with Chile over the Beagle Channel. The citizenship consultation was to determine whether the peace and friendship treaty had been accepted with the neighboring country. During this first experience, Peronist Senator Vicente Saadi exchanged ideas on the "No" and Foreign Minister Dante Caputo, representative of the official position, as part of a moderate initiative by journalist Bernando Neustadt.

Before the presidential election of 1989, there had been a district debate: Antonio Cafiero and Juan Manuel Casella, respectively for Peronism and Radicalism, played in 1987 the first televised exchange of proposals for the Government of Buenos Aires .

When it was time to replicate the initiative of the 89 presidential replacement, the then Peronist candidate, Carlos Saúl Menem, was absent from the "New Time" program of Neustadt, where he was going to oppose platforms with radical postulator Eduardo Angeloz.

The federal capital has taken up the tradition of its autonomous city status and, since 1996, televised debates have been mounted on the All News cable signal for each election in Buenos Aires. During this first year of debate on the capital, one of the participants in the presidency of the Government of Buenos Aires was Fernando de la Rúa, who was to become president in 1999 as part of a campaign. presidential election without debate.

For the 2003 elections, there was no debate between the three postulants of Peronism – Néstor Kirchner, Carlos Menem and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá – and the candidate Recrear, Ricardo López Murphy, among the other candidates for the Rivadavia chair. . Since then, the initiative was absent from the 2007 and 2011 elections, two electoral processes won by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Debate 2015. But the story changed from 2015, when the civil initiative of the NGO Argentina Debate was born and that all presidential candidates have agreed, twice, the exchange of proposals. As a multisectoral organization, Argentina Debate launched the first presidential debate in the history of Argentina: on October 4, 2015, opposition candidates, Mauricio Macri, Sergio Massa, Margarita Stolbizer, Nicolás del Caño and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, participated in the meeting. then representative of the Official Front for Victory, Daniel Scioli.

Only one air channel transmitted the cycle. Macri and Scioli, the two candidates who participated in the second round, participated in the debate that took place at the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). On this occasion, the program was broadcast on the five national channels.

Source: Nicolás Poggi / Telam