Argentina's Senate voted on February 20 to suspend the country's national primary elections for 2025, handing Javier Milei's government a parliamentary victory ahead of the October midterms. The measure passed by 43 votes to 20, with six abstentions, according to the Buenos Aires Herald. Its effect was targeted: it set aside the open, simultaneous and compulsory primaries known as PASO for one electoral cycle rather than abolishing them permanently.
The lower house had approved the bill on February 6 by 162 votes to 55, with 28 abstentions. In both chambers the outcome depended on legislators outside Milei's own party. That cooperation showed the administration could still build issue-by-issue majorities despite a small congressional bloc. It did not mean the opposition had agreed on the rest of the government's economic agenda.
What PASO was meant to do
Under the existing system, voters participate in a compulsory nationwide ballot before the general election. Parties and coalitions can use it to select candidates, but must hold the contest even where an internal nomination is effectively settled. The administration argued that making taxpayers fund an election without meaningful contests was wasteful. In a statement reported by the Herald after the Senate vote, the presidential office described the primaries as an expensive national opinion poll for political parties.
That argument appealed across factional lines. Some legislators in opposition blocs supported suspension, others voted against it and others abstained. The result was not a clean government-versus-opposition split. Before the vote, the government had sought a more permanent elimination of PASO and changes to party financing but lacked the support, the Herald reported. The one-year suspension was the narrower change that could pass.
Critics raised a different concern: a primary open to the wider electorate can constrain party leaders' control over candidacies and help smaller contenders compete for a nomination. Left-wing deputy Nicolás del Caño told the Herald during the lower-house debate that the plan served the government's convenience rather than the public. The government rejected that framing, arguing the expense was unjustifiable. Neither claim settles whether a particular party would have held a competitive contest in 2025.
An immediate electoral gain, a later choice
For Milei's La Libertad Avanza, the calendar mattered. The party was preparing to test its appeal outside the 2023 presidential election, while rivals had to agree on nominees without a national compulsory primary. The suspension could change bargaining inside opposition coalitions as much as inside the governing movement. It could also simplify the electoral timetable, but any projected saving should be treated as a government rationale rather than a measured outcome until accounts are published.
A vote to suspend is distinct from a vote to redesign the whole electoral system. PASO's future beyond 2025 remained open, and provincial and city political contests were not automatically decided by the federal bill. The larger political lesson of the vote was that Milei could trade an ambitious structural demand for a narrower, time-limited law and secure enough allies to enact it. The October campaign would test whether those alliances survived once questions of candidates, budgets and the economy became more divisive.
