According to Marcelo Bermolén, director of the Institutional Quality Observatory of the Austral University, there is a controversy surrounding Javier Milei's intention to prevent the opposition from reorganizing and using the same instruments he employed to come to power. In this sense, Bermolén stated that the project to suspend the PASO (Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory) elections, which received partial approval in the Chamber of Deputies, is an electoral reform and not a political reform. He also warned that this decision may be motivated by strategic reasons on the part of the Government.
The PASO were originally established in 2002 after the political crisis of 2001, although they were suspended several times until they were repealed in 2006. It was in 2009, during the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, that the system was reinstated through Law 26.571 and was applied for the first time in the national elections of 2011. Since then, the PASO have been held in seven general elections, including legislative and presidential elections.
The report from the Institutional Quality Observatory of the Austral University questions the initiative to suspend the PASO, arguing that this would prevent the opposition from reorganizing and using the same tools that brought Milei to power. Furthermore, it highlights that participation in the PASO has been significant, with an average of 75.09% in presidential elections and 71.7% in legislative elections, indicating that their realization is part of the Argentine political culture.
In the past, the PASO have been used by the opposition to access power, leading to the emergence of new political actors, as occurred with Mauricio Macri in 2015 and Javier Milei in 2023. Therefore, the proposed suspension would be the first interruption in the application of the PASO since their implementation, as they would not be applied in 2025.
