Argentina's Political System: How Can it be Improved?
- Valentina (Argentina)
- Sep 22, 2016
- 3 min read

Argentina, a country vast with resources, has the opportunity to develop into a more productive economic powerhouse; however, given the last political leaders, the country is filled with poverty, inequality, and it is entering a downward spiral as a global partner. For 12 years the Kirchner’s ran the country. From 2003 to 2007,Néstor Kirchner was the president of Argentina. In 2007, the people of Argentina, in a free and fair election, selected Cristina Kirchner, Nestor Kirchner’s wife, to be president--she served until the end of 2015. During this period the Kirchner’s had a bad political management, such as: a poor fiscal management; the closure of imports and exports which was supposed to increase the national production, but not all the products were replaced which lead to several shortages like for example of some medicines; and the worst of all, terrible corruption from many public figures. Many poor uneducated people did not realize how bad this government was because of the subsidies and benefits they received. Hence the Kirchner’s received a lot of support from the poorer areas in the country. They did not realize that some very important services the government was not covering, such as education and health care, but instead the government provided free TV and more money for having more children.
Argentina’s system fails in many ways. To start from the basis of a democracy, the elections. As they are not electronic, fraud is very easily achieved and it happens all the time, favoring one political party. Also, the voting age is 16, which I believe is crazy as many teenagers are not well-informed to vote reasonably. And finally, voting is mandatory and you are fined if you decide not to vote, I also think this is wrong because many may vote for any political party without thinking about it because they are forced to. Another problem present in my country is that the division of powers is not really a balanced division. The president has too much power, and this is problematic because basically one single person has the control of the country.
Sadly, the biggest issue in Argentina is that there is a lot of poverty. Millions of people receive non or terrible education, and have miserable living conditions. The gap between the poor and the rich is enormous. Plus there is a lot of criminality, and as I mentioned before corruption.
So to what extent is this system really a democracy? With fraudulent elections, where some political campaigns spend millions of pesos which they obtained due to corruption, where many votes are bought and where in the end after the vote almost all the decisions are made by a single person?
By the end of 2015 a new president, Mauricio Macri, was elected. He is starting a reform in the country. He is trying to re-introduce Argentina in the world market by gradually opening imports and exports and by trying to attract foreign investors. He is doing some useful public services, such as constructing new roads. He affirmed his biggest objective is to decrease poverty. Another of his objectives are to decrease crime and to fight narcos and corruption. He also promised doing a change in the elections, by doing them electronically in all the country.
I agree with Macri's reforms, I believe the Argentina can improve a lot during his government. But I also think that one of the biggest emergencies is to improve education. In order for the country to improve in the long-term people need to be educated. In this way, poverty would decrease, people would know more about some very important things such as protected sex and basic hygiene, they could do more challenging jobs which also give them more money, they would know about some terrible habits and their consequences, and they would start voting for what they really believe is best for the country.
Argentina has a lot to improve, and through a lot of hard work and effort I trust that the country can decrease its poverty, improve public services like education and health care for the well-being of all the citizens, and grow economically. The country can also fight corruption and insecurity. When these objectives are attained, Argentina has the potential to be a great country to live in.
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