Five cabinet ministers and other senior officials in the government of Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez offered to step down Wednesday after a poor showing for the ruling coalition in weekend primary elections.
The ministers of the interior, justice, science, environment and culture offered their resignations to Fernandez, who had said after Sunday’s vote that “we must have done something not right.”
The ruling Frente de Todos center-left coalition garnered less than 31 percent of the vote ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 14 to renew half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of those in the Senate.
The alliance has a majority in the Senate and had been hoping to achieve the same in the lower house.
Sunday’s vote was to pick candidates for the November elections, but it is also considered a barometer of people’s voting intentions.
The center-right coalition Juntos, of ex-president Mauricio Macri, obtained 40 percent of the votes cast nationwide on Sunday. It critically made great strides in the province of Buenos Aires, the country’s largest electoral district and considered a bastion of Fernandez’s party.
Fernandez took power from the incumbent Macri in 2019.
Public discontent with his government has been growing in a country in recession since 2018 and a GDP drop of 9.9 percent last year amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Argentina has one of the world’s highest inflation rates, at 29 percent from January to July this year, and a poverty rate of 42 percent.
