Bread and Medicines to Cost More Under Macri, Warns Scioli

The economic policies of Argentine Let’s Change opposition alliance will drive up food and medicine prices with the same tactics that failed in the country once before, presidential candidate Daniel Scioli warned, as he prepared to debate rival Mauricio Macri.

The candidate for Front for Victory, the socialist party of current President Cristina Fernandez, Scioli cautioned Argentines to watch Sunday’s one-and-a-half-hour televised debate, bearing in mind his neoliberal opponent’s financial ideas were doomed for failure.

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“The devaluation that they propose, with a dollar to 15, always brings raises in prices and that we already see now with bread and medicines,” he said on Friday, before sending a direct message to voters.

“Housewives: look at how bread and medicines are getting more expensive due to the declarations of the advisors of Macri, that show that in reality they don’t want to change, but to return to the past with policies of adjustment and devaluation that already failed in Argentina,” he said.

Ahead of the Nov. 22 runoff, Sunday’s debate is the first time the two will spar as presidential candidates leading many commentators to label the event “historic.”

Both have been locked away rehearsing arguments and counterattacks ahead of the debate, which could swing the results of forthcoming second round of elections.

According to Argentine daily La Nacion, the practice sessions for each of the hopefuls lasted several hours and were topped up with sandwiches and sodas.

Scioli was drilled by colleagues Gustavo Marangoni and his chief of cabinet, Alberto Perez, who took turns in simulating the debate with his rival, La Nacion added. The pair helped Scioli go over his arguments for his key points of economic development, education and infancy, security and human rights, and democratic strengthening, and to prepare responses.

On Saturday, a conference of leading Economic and Science professionals meeting at the prestigious University of Buenos Aires declared their support for Scioli, arguing that “in the last 12 years (under government’s of Scioli’s Front for Victory) unemployment fell from 18 percent to 6.6 percent, Working Flexibility was abolished, the Council of Minimum Living and Mobile Wage was reopened, favoring workers more than investors.”

The conference added in a statement, “Argentina is the country that achieved the biggest improvement in income distribution in Latin America in the last decade.”

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Government-aligned political opposition figures have slammed Macri’s plans for delivering major bonuses to big business in the form of land, infrastructure, and future profits without addressing critical issues faced by people in Buenos Aires, such as the housing crisis.

In the presidential race, Macri presents himself as an alternative to President Cristina Fernandez and her Peronist political movement. Backed by big business and private media, Macri promotes neoliberal policies and has promised to introduce free market reforms to Argentina’s economy.

Critics say Macri’s policies favor the wealthy and big business at the expense of sidelining problems of systemic inequality.

Macri achieved a surprise surge in support in the Oct. 21 first-round elections that polls beforehand predicted Front for Victory coalition candidate Scioli would win. The tight race between the two frontrunners forced a runoff election.