By DPA
Buenos Aires : Argentina will go to the polls to elect a new president Sunday, with first lady and senator Cristina Fernandez the favourite.
Argentines will have a choice between 13 candidates. Senator Fernandez, wife of outgoing President Nestor Kirchner, is expected to top 40 percent according to opinion polls, while her closest rivals, led by Christian Liberal Elisa Carrio, will struggle to reach 20 percent.
To avoid a run-off, the centre-left Fernandez must get at least 45 percent of the vote, or 40 percent with a lead of more than 10 percentage points above the second-place finisher.
Polls will be open for 27 million voters from 11.00-21.00 GMT Sunday. In theory, no exit polls are allowed to be made public before the first official results are made known, but Argentine media have a history of violating this embargo.
Preliminary official results are expected early Monday.
“We know what is missing. We know how to do it,” is the campaign slogan of Fernandez.
President Kirchner’s successor will inherit a country prone to economic crises, though currently showing impressive rates of growth of more than eight percent a year to go along with worrying inflation levels.
Kirchner, president since 2003, presided over a period of stability after a severe political crisis and over a rebound following the country’s economic collapse. Argentina declared the largest debt default in the world’s history in 2001.
Former finance minister Roberto Lavagna, now a presidential candidate, is widely credited with having restructured more than $90 billion in public debt. Creditors got some 30 cents on their dollar in longer-term bonds, a below-average offer which critics said violated financial standards. Buenos Aires argued that any more would have jeopardized Argentina’s future.
In 2006, Argentina paid off its obligations to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an extremely unpopular institution in the country and generally thought to share responsibility with Argentine authorities for the economic woes.
Argentina’s economy grew by 8.5 percent last year, but 27 percent of the country’s 40 million people continue to live below the poverty line, posing an ongoing challenge for the government.