Mauricio Macri
Mauricio Macri is an Argentine businessman and politician who served as President of Argentina from 2015 to 2019. He has been the leader of the Republican Proposal party since its founding in 2005. He previously served as Chief of Government of Buenos Aires from 2007 to 2015, and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies representing Buenos Aires from 2005 to 2007. Ideologically, he identifies himself as a liberal conservative on the Argentine centre-right.
Born in Tandil, Macri trained as a civil engineer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and attended Columbia University for business school. After embarking on a business career, he was kidnapped in 1991. The experience prompted him to enter politics, after being released by his captors. He served as president of football club Boca Juniors from 1994 to 2007, reestablishing its profitability which raised his public profile. In 2003 he launched the Commitment for Change, eventually developing it into the modern PRO party. Following an unsuccessful bid for Chief of Government of Buenos Aires in 2003, Macri was elected in 2007 and won re-election in 2011. Four years later he was elected president of Argentina in the 2015 general election – the first presidential runoff ballotage in Argentine history.
The presidency of Macri focused on reforming the national economy and improving diplomatic relations. He moved from a fixed exchange-rate system to a floating one, and removed taxes on exports and reduced subsidies on energy to reduce the fiscal deficit. He aligned the country with gradualist neoliberalism and re-opened Argentina to international markets by lifting currency controls, restructuring sovereign debt, and pressing free-market solutions. Domestically, he pursued moderate socially liberal policies, and liberalized the energy sector.
Macri strongly opposed the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela for human rights abuses and called for a restoration of democracy in the country. He recognized Juan Guaidó, who was elected President of Venezuela by the National Assembly during the Venezuelan presidential crisis of 2019. Macri improved Argentinian relations with the United States
and from Mercosur achieved a free trade agreement with the European Union and closer ties with the Pacific Alliance. During the first week in office, Macri annulled the Memorandum of understanding between Argentina and Iran, which would have established a joint investigation into the 1994 bombing with AMIA, a terrorist attack on a Jewish organization for which Argentina blamed Hezbollah and Iran.
His legislative pursuits varied in efficacy and received mixed reception from Argentines and globally. His presidency has been praised for leaving a legacy of anti-corruption and increasing Argentina's sovereign marketability, but has been criticized for failing to materially reform the economy, falling short of containing inflation, and building up external debt. Real wages declined during his term in office and a large number of small and medium-sized companies went out of business. In the 2019 general election, he became the first incumbent president in Argentina to lose reelection to a second term and was defeated by Alberto Fernández.
Early life, education and early career
Macri was born in Tandil in the province of Buenos Aires, the son of Italian-born tycoon Francesco "Franco" Macri and Alicia Blanco-Villegas Cinque. The family moved to Buenos Aires a short time later, and kept their houses in Tandil as vacation properties. His father, and his uncle Jorge Blanco Villegas, influenced Macri to become a businessman, and Franco expected his son to succeed him as leader of his firms. Macri preferred his uncle's company to constant scrutiny by his father. He was educated at Colegio Cardenal Newman, and received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. At this time Macri became interested in neoliberalism and joined the now-defunct Union of the Democratic Centre and a think tank led by former minister Álvaro Alsogaray. In 1985, he briefly attended Columbia Business School, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Universidad del CEMA in Buenos Aires.Macri's professional experience began at SIDECO Americana, a construction company which was part of his father's Socma Group holding company, where he worked for three years as a junior analyst and became a senior analyst. In 1984, he worked in the credit department of Citibank Argentina in Buenos Aires. Macri joined Socma Group the same year, and became its general manager in 1985. In 1992, he became vice president of Sevel Argentina, and became president two years later.
Boca Juniors
Macri intended to run for chairman of sports club Boca Juniors in 1991, but his father convinced him to keep working at Sevel. He tried to buy the Deportivo Español team, but could not get support from the team's board of directors. Macri supported Boca Juniors, paying coach César Luis Menotti's salary and buying players for the team. Franco, skeptical about his son's prospects for success, later allowed him to run Boca Juniors. He instructed aide Orlando Salvestrini to work with Mauricio for two reasons: to help him and to monitor his activities. Mauricio met with former Boca Juniors chairmen Antonio Alegre and Carlos Heller, and tried to convince them to work with him; both rebuffed him. Macri later sought the support of other groups in Boca Juniors, eventually winning the team's internal elections in 1995 with 7,058 votes.His first years were unsuccessful; the team's performance was poor, players frequently complained about salaries and bonuses, and Macri changed coaches three times. The only initial improvement was a partial reconstruction of the stadium. He arranged for the Boca Juniors institution to operate on the stock exchange, selling shares of active football players owned by the club. Macri's first coach was Carlos Salvador Bilardo, who brought 14 new players to the team and finished the 1996 Apertura league in 10th place. His second coach, Héctor Veira, also performed poorly. New coach Carlos Bianchi helped Juan Román Riquelme improve his performance, and had Martín Palermo and Guillermo Barros Schelotto as effective forwards. They won the first two tournaments, beginning a record 40-match unbeaten run.
During his tenure at the helm of Boca Juniors, the xeneize team obtained sixteen titles, which established him as the president of the institution that has obtained the most football titles, displacing Alberto J. Armando to second place, with twelve total titles.
Macri has been trying to reform the Argentine soccer statutes for almost two decades to allow clubs to become sports limited companies.
Early political career
In 1991, Macri was kidnapped for 12 days by officers of the Argentine Federal Police. Kept in a small room with a chemical toilet and a hole in the roof to receive food, he was freed when his family reportedly paid a multimillion-dollar ransom. Macri has said that the ordeal led him to enter politics.Macri entered politics in 2003, founding the centre-right party Commitment to Change. The party was intended to be a source of new politicians, since the major parties were discredited after the December 2001 riots. Later that year, Macri ran for mayor of Buenos Aires, alongside Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. Although he won the first round of the election with 37 percent of the vote, he lost the runoff election with 46 percent of the vote going to sitting mayor Aníbal Ibarra, who was re-elected. In 2005, Macri joined Ricardo López Murphy of Recrear in a political coalition, the Republican Proposal, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies with 33.9 percent of the vote. His campaigns were managed by Jaime Durán Barba. According to a 2007 report, Macri had participated in only 44 of 321 votings; he countered that he had become disappointed with Congress, since bills sent by the president were not open to debate or amendment. Ibarra was impeached and removed from office in 2006 as a result of the República Cromañón nightclub fire, and his term was completed by vice-chief of government Jorge Telerman.
During 2006, Macri worked both on his political activities as deputy and with his presidency of Boca Juniors. Before the 2007 general elections, he negotiated with the likely presidential candidate Jorge Sobisch, the governor of Neuquén Province, to create a national right-wing political coalition. This conflicted with Macri's alliance with Ricardo López Murphy, who also intended to run for president and had denounced Sobisch for corruption. Later that year, Sobisch's image was severely tarnished when teacher Carlos Fuentealba was killed during a union demonstration in Neuquén.
File:Cristina-Macri-Scioli Adjudicacion del Sarmiento.jpg|thumb|left|Macri with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli in 2008
He immediately backed out of his pact with Sobisch and remained neutral during the national election, which was won by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of the Front for Victory.
In February 2007, Macri announced that he would run again for mayor of Buenos Aires, heading the PRO slate with Gabriela Michetti. In the 2 June 2007 first round, he received 45.6 percent of the vote and defeated government-backed Daniel Filmus ; incumbent Jorge Telerman finished third. In the 24 June runoff election, Macri defeated Filmus with 60.96 percent of the vote.
For the 2009 midterm elections, he allied with Francisco de Narváez and Felipe Solá. The alliance was successful; De Narvaez defeated former president Néstor Kirchner in Buenos Aires Province and Gabriela Michetti won the city election. With this defeat, the Kirchners lost their majority in both chambers of the Congress. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose public image was good after the death and state funeral of Néstor Kirchner in late 2010, ran for re-election. Macri, who was considered a likely candidate for the opposition, ran for re-election as mayor instead. He won the first round on 10 July 2011 with 47.08 percent of the vote against Filmus's 27.78 percent, and then the 31 July runoff against Filmus with 64.25 percent of the vote.