 Near the end of his life he publicly stated that he would not choose to return to armed struggle, and tried to obtain political support to run for president in 2007.To this end, in 2005, before the legislative elections, he launched the Party for Work and Development ("Partido del Trabajo y el Desarrollo") before a throng in Rosario, with the avowed goals of "closing the gap that separates the people from politics and the rich from the poor", "opposing neoliberalism" and supporting "Latin American integration".Gorriarán Merlo died of cardiac arrest at the Hospital Argerich in Buenos Aires while awaiting surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm on 22 September 2006, at the age of 64.