Union for the Homeland

The Union for the Homeland (Spanish: Unión por la Patria, UP) is a political and electoral coalition of Peronist political parties in Argentina who are the main opposition coalition since December 2023.

The coalition was formed to compete in the 2023 general election, and is a successor to the previous Frente de Todos coalition, whose candidate in the 2019 presidential election, Alberto Fernández, was successfully elected President of Argentina. The coalition is centred on the Justicialist Party and its allies both on the federal and provincial levels, including the Renewal Front of Sergio Massa, who was the coalition's candidate for president in the 2023 presidential election.

History

Background

In the run-up to the 2019 presidential election, the Kirchnerist faction of the Justicialist Party arranged for the establishment of a common Peronist electoral front. This project ultimately materialized with the formation of the Frente de Todos coalition, which comprised the Justicialist majority along with a number of other parties of the political left and centre. This alliance was itself a successor to both the short-lived Citizen's Unity bloc formed for the 2017 midterm elections as well as the Front for Victory, which served as the political instrument of the Kirchnerist political camp between 2003 and 2017. The alliance presented Alberto Fernández as its sole candidate in the 2019 presidential primaries, in which he secured just under 48% of the vote. In the subsequent general election, Fernández again garnered 48% of the vote, against the 40% of incumbent president Mauricio Macri of the Juntos por el Cambio coalition, ousting the sitting administration and returning the Peronists to power after four years in the opposition. Fernández, along with his vice president, the former President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, went on to govern the country for the ensuing four-year period. Halfway through this term, the Frente de Todos coalition suffered a significant defeat in the 2021 Argentine legislative election, losing seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and thereby losing control of Congress for the first time in nearly 40 years.

2023 election

In April 2023, President Alberto Fernandez announced that he would not seek re-election in the next presidential election. In the primary elections on August of that year, Sergio Massa defeated Juan Grabois by a margin of nearly 16 percentage points, although it became the worst result for a ruling Peronist coalition since the PASO was first implemented in 2009.

In the runoff in November 2023, Libertarian candidate Javier Milei defeated Massa in the second round with 55.65% of the vote, the highest percentage since Argentina's transition to democracy. Massa conceded defeat shortly before the official results were published.

Ideology

Union for the Homeland is a Peronist coalition, along with its internal currents, Federal Peronism and Kirchnerism. The coalition is considered mostly centre-left. However, it also includes communist factions, left-wing and also right-wing populists; conservative, Catholic and progressive parties. Overall, it is a broad alliance that has right-wing, centrist and leftist parties.

Member parties

References

1. Homeland Union
2. Union for Homeland
3. 2023 Argentine provincial elections
4. United States Department of Homeland Security
5. 2023 Argentine general election
6. Renewal Front
7. Justicialist Party
8. Union for the Homeland and the People
9. Union for Homeland and Progress
10. Argentine Chamber of Deputies
11. Homeland for the Jewish people
12. Homeland
13. Independence (legislative bloc)
14. Radical Civic Union
15. Jorge Macri
16. Revolutionary Communist Party (Argentina)
17. Sergio Massa
18. 2023 Buenos Aires provincial election
19. Order "For Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR"
20. Abdulrahman Sewehli