All Change in Argentina as Sun Sets on the Kirchner Era

Argentina’s open presidential primary is over, and the stage is now set for its election in October.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner during a ceremony to commemorate the 205th anniversary of the May Revolution, at Plaza de Mayo square, in Buenos Aires, on May 25, 2015. An uprising on May 25, 1810, at Argentina's capital main square, sparked a revolution that led to the country's independence from Spain years later. Alejandro Pagni/AFP/Getty Images

Argentina’s open presidential primary is over, and the stage is now set for its election in October. With the current president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, constitutionally barred from running again, the autumn poll looks set to be a fight between Argentina’s two main political coalitions.

On the left is Daniel Scioli, the current governor of Buenos Aires Province, who leads the official Peronist party Front for Victory. He is Fernández de Kirchner’s candidate of choice, though has stayed shy of taking on an explicitly Kirchnerist political identity. On the right is the current mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri; he heads a coalition of strange bedfellows called “Cambiemos” (Let’s Change), which comprises Macri’s conservative Republican Proposal party, social democrats, and the Radical Civic Union.

When Fernández de Kirchner's term ends in December 2015, she and her late husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) will have enjoyed the longest unbroken presidential tenure since Argentina became a democracy.