Primary Elections in Argentina May Signal Changes to Come (Or Not)
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Across the region the Argentine primary election on August 11, 2013 (in which voter turnout topped 75%) was seen as a defeat for the forces loyal to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Though she went all out to support her hand-picked candidates, and even finagled photo opts with the Pope in Brazil, her Front for Victory (FpV) party had the worst day politically of its ten-year existence. As a referendum on her rule, many observers believe, the prognosis looks grim for the official elections in October, which will decide the fate of half of the seats in the lower house of Congress and two-thirds of those in the upper house. The FpV, which has had a majority in both houses since 2011, took the most votes, winning 26% of the total, but it was also the only party to field candidates throughout the country. It lost in the capital and in 14 of Argentina’s 23 provinces, even losing in Santa Cruz, home province and political launching pad of the late Néstor Kirchner. And in the key race in Buenos Aires province, a former member of CFK’s cabinet–Sergio Massa, now Mayor of Tigre–defeated CFK’s candidate, Martin Insaurralde, by five points. It now seems unlikely that in October the FpV will be able to muster the necessary two-thirds majorities to change the constitution so the president can run for a third term.
Before the Election Signs Weren’t Good for the President’s Brand
In La Nación of Buenos Aires, Joaquín Morales Solá insisted that the arrogant adherents of Kirchnerismo “have shown that they are indifferent to the consequences of their actions.” He noted that in the capital, surveys indicated that the president’s forces were headed for “a heavy defeat”. In Buenos Aires province, where “all the major battles” will be fought, Sergio Massa was clearly leading according to all the major national pollsters. In making it “a definitive choice: Massa or me,” CFK had made a serious mistake.
James Neilson in the Buenos Aires Herald argued that much of CFK’s current weakness has been caused by a lack of “consistency” with her own stated values. Only a year after “unceremoniously booting out the Spaniards who imagined they owned a big chunk of YPF, the oil firm that all good nationalists think symbolizes the country’s independence from greedy foreign corporations,” CFK signed “a sweetheart deal with one of their number, Chevron,” much to the annoyance of “her Ecuadorean friend, Rafael Correa.” Her “pragmatic approach” to policy specifics may “give some grim pleasure” to critics of Peronist economic practice, “but it can hardly be to the taste” of Peronist “true believers.” To them “it must be as though Pope Francis surprised us all by saying he thought Roman Catholic theology was just a load of nonsense, or a revered Marxist thinker suddenly insisted that he took his cue from Groucho, ‘These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others,’ rather than from Karl.” Neilson believes that CFK’s take on Peronist populism “is reactionary,” and “devoted…to preserving the corporatist order,” on which she chose to hang “fashionably progressive leftist garments.” What CFK refers to as “her economic ‘model’,” is really “a slightly modified copy of the one Juan Domingo Perón had assembled almost seventy years ago and which, despite all efforts to dismantle it, remains with us.” Yet while it survived longer than many people predicted, it’s “now in the process of falling apart.”
O Globo of Rio de Janeiro reported CFK’s rather defensive assertion that “You win with proposals not with complaints,” made as she cast her vote.
After the Election, the Consensus at Home and Around the Region was Clear
La Nación of Buenos Aires immediately proclaimed the election a defeat that puts an end to all talk of CFK’s possible re-election. They pointed to the words of Ricardo Forster, a philosopher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (and a Kirchnerista candidate in October). Forster asserted that “Cristina has never talked about re-election,” but acknowledged the generally accepted take on her intentions, and offered that Argentines “will vote in October with less suspicion.” And he offered that “hopefully one day we can talk about a reform of the constitution and judicial reform, but that’s a debate that will surely come after 2015.” Forster also acknowledged that FpV would need to “recover votes lost” in some areas of earlier support, but denied that it is contemplating a change of strategy for the October elections: “The project remains the same.” And while Forster acknowledged that Kirchner will have “to account for errors that may have been committed,” he touted improvements in Argentina’s quality of life, and asserted that people forget what life was like ten years ago, and constantly seek improvements. Also in La Nación, union leader and candidate Gerónimo “Momo” Venegas asserted that Argentines must begin to confront the “post cristinismo” era. In Clarín of Buenos Aires Kirchnerista Mario Ishii said that “people are angry with Cristina,” and he characterized their choice of Massa over her candidate “in a large flood of votes” as “kicking the shit” out of the FpV.
Observers outside of Argentina came to similar conclusions. In Uruguay, El País of Montevideo interpreted the primary results as “a strong punishment vote against the government of Fernández,” which also “enshrined the figure of Massa,” though they noted that CFK remains the main political force in the country. In Chile El Mercurio of Santiago reported that Kirchnerismo admitted that the election defeat halted the re-election of Cristina Fernández, and they too saw it as a “punishment vote.” In Brazil Folha de São Paulo said it was Kirchnerismo’s worst election result in the Legislature since Néstor Kirchner took office in 2003, and was exacerbated by losses in key constituencies. Yet Folha observed that CFK downplayed the defeats in major districts and highlighted the national result. “We are the largest national political power and, above all, we are the government. This is a primary election. We will be able to maintain or increase parliamentary representation.” O Globo of Rio de Janeiro also repeated that theme: Kirchnerismo suffered its biggest electoral defeat in more than ten years of government and, followed Clarín in maintaining that voters could “anticipate the end of a political cycle in Argentina.” In Mexico Excelsior of Mexico City focused on the opposition victories in the province of Buenos Aires, though El Universal of Mexico City recognized that what the CFK government suffered was “a narrow defeat” in the strategic province of Buenos Aires and in the other voting districts. At the very least the election was “a sharp wake-up call and a warning that the final stage of an era” may have just begun.
Massa was the Man of the Hour
According to Luciana Bertoia in the Buenos Aires Herald, the Renewal Front leader Sergio Massa is looking beyond Congress and toward the presidential race in 2015, though he has tried to “tone down the expectations.” When supporters called on him to declare his presidential intentions, he responded that they had to proceed “step by step.” But he has also made it clear that Argentines “should stop looking backwards and focus on the future.” And as Massa supporter José Ignacio de Mendiguren (former chief of the Argentine Industrial Union, UIA) has said, “We are happy because we are a young front.” In Página/12 Raul Kollmann said “Tell me how you voted and I’ll tell you who you are.” Looking at exit poll survey data focusing on voter support, it is clear that women, people under 34, and those over 50 “voted overwhelmingly” for Massa, “with a strong footprint among higher-income sectors, but also very important vote currents among the poor.” Six out of ten people who voted for him did so, based their support of “Massa’s background in management,” i.e. the fame he built as mayor of Tigre.
Yet while CFK May Be Down, Kirchnerismo May Not Be Out
The Buenos Aires Herald recounted how President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner “launched a counterattack” after the election, sending out a series of tweets against coverage in various publications, including Clarín, Infobae, La Nación, and Perfil. She also “delivered a harsh speech calling business and union leaders to ‘seriously discuss’ the Kirchnerite economic model.” In a clear reference to Sergio Massa, she insisted that she wanted to deal with the “big-league players, not the substitutes they’re putting in.” She called for “a real debate with the Bankers’ Union headed by Jorge Brito, to see what they want to do with the country’s finances.” She also took aim at the financial sector, claiming that “when Wall Street celebrates we start worrying — every time Wall Street was happy, things went wrong for the people.” And she insisted that the important players in the media establishment “hide the truth.” She tweeted that Clarín acts as like a “house organ” of the US Embassy.
In Página/12 Horacio Verbitsky called CFK “The Great Electress”. What the consensus-take on the primaries overlooks is that the FpV total throughout the country “surpassed that of the four main opposition forces combined.” So while CFK confirmed her status as the single most powerful national force, Clarín Group “declared her defeat.” This was despite the fact that “it is impossible to add the votes of the various opposition forces together, given the lack of affinity between them.” While the FpV has fairly uniform representation across the country, the opposition’s votes are widely “dispersed” and “incompatible.” And even if CFK is out of the presidential race, she will have a large say in a possible faceoff between Daniel Scioli (current Governor of Buenos Aires Province and Néstor Kirchner’s vice president) and Sergio Massa. So any suggestion that Massa has a clear path to the Casa Rosada is “premature” since “no analysis makes sense” if you ignore that Cristina is still the probable king maker in 2015.
And in the Buenos Aires Herald, Mempo Giardinelli agreed that it is unwise to forget about the interior provinces. He noted that even if “the attention of the press and part of this capital’s population does not extend beyond what happens in the shadow of the Obelisk and perhaps a bit in greater Buenos Aires,” in the broader country the FpV is still “the monster to vanquish.” Citizens of the capital, many of whom “stay blind and deaf, though not mute,” are ill advised to “turn their back on a country that has grown far more in the last decade than in the previous four.”