“There was fraud” comptrollers told Laura Ayerza de Castilho

Eleanor Sa-Carneiro

Laura Ayerza de Castilho was assigned as a comptroller during the Argentinian elections of Sunday October 22 to help supervise the votes and ballots in a school in La Matanza, one of the worst suburbs of Buenos Aires. She told Qonversations that she suspects the elections were not as transparent as they should have been.

While Laura admits she can only speak for the table she was supervising at the La Matanza school, she was convinced Patricia Bullrich had won. Yet despite the volume of votes that she witnessed pitting Bullrich in the lead, Sergio Massa, the current Minister of Economy who has sent inflation soaring, was declared victorious with some 37% of the votes the following day, and Bullrich was out of the race. “That was very strange”, she confessed.

Her suspicions grew as she spoke to colleagues and other comptrollers in other parts of the country. Laura said they felt the same way, telling her “yes, we discovered there was fraud, and we couldn’t do anything about it”.

Many of the 34 million voters that took to the ballot boxes, may have submitted blank votes to show their dissatisfaction with the options, Laura concedes, and many more may have voted for Sergio Massa, the establishment candidate, instead of Bullrich, to avoid Javier Milei getting through to the second round. “They were terrified of having a Donald Trump again, in Buenos Aires”, she explains.

Whether or not the influential establishment behind Sergio Massa, Peronist, or as Laura believes is the Kirchner candidate, managed to buy votes in the weeks leading up to the elections where taxes were slashed, and money was given to pensioners, Laura believes there was fraud and is surprised “journalists are not talking about this. No one even mentioned the word fraud”.

Watch the clip or full interview on Qonversations.