The scion and the heir

A COUNTDOWN clock hangs over the desks in the open-plan political headquarters of Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, who hopes to be Argentina’s next president. It tells skinny-jeaned campaign workers how many days, hours and minutes there are “until change”. The clock will hit zero on August 9th, when political parties hold primaries to select their presidential candidates. Then, presumably, it will be reset for the first round of the election itself, to be held on October 25th.

The primaries are less momentous than the clock suggests. There is little suspense about who will win. Mr Macri (pictured, left) is way ahead of rivals to be the candidate of Cambiemos (“Let’s change”), an electoral front that consists of his Republican Proposal and two other parties. The other main contender for the presidency is likely to be Daniel Scioli (pictured, right), the governor of Buenos Aires province. He is the only candidate from the Front for Victory (FPV), the party of Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.