ARGENTINA: Alliance’s Post-Triumph Challenge – Expanding Its Base

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 27 1997 (IPS) - Argentina’s new opposition Alliance, born less than three months ago, capitalised on widespread social discontent due to corruption and high unemployment to win a solid triumph in Sunday’s legislative elections.

The coalition’s challenge now, according to its leaders, is broadening its social base, with its sights set on the presidency in 1999.

The Alliance for Work, Justice and Education, comprised of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) and centre-left Front for a Country with Solidarity (Frepaso), put an end to a series of national-level victories won since 1987 by the governing Justice Party (Peronist).

The opposition’s triumph, in elections held to renovate half of the Chamber of Deputies and to create a new city-level parliament in Buenos Aires, consolidated the position of several new leaders. But spokespersons for the Alliance have so far avoided announcing candidates for the presidency.

President Carlos Menem aired a message praising his government and its achievements, which was aired four hours after the closing of the polls.

Alliance Senator Graciela Fernandez Meijide – whose son was ‘disappeared’ in the 1976-83 dictatorship – underlined that the coalition did not aim to obstruct the government, and highlighted the challenge of consolidating and broadening its voter base.

The Alliance, which ran candidates in 13 of the country’s 23 voting districts, took 36.5 percent of the votes, compared to the 35 percent garnered by the Justice Party, which ran in all districts.

But since the UCR also obtained 6.8 percent and Frepaso 2.4 percent in those districts where the Alliance did not present candidates, the opposition coalition thus took a total of 45.7 percent of the votes.

The Justice Party legislative slate will shrink from 131 to 118 deputies in the Chamber of Deputies, while the Alliance’s will grow from 91 to 110. The share of the rest of the parties will be reduced from 35 to 29.

“The day after” was marked by happiness, greetings and a climate of optimism and camaradarie among the various opposition candidates – not only of the Alliance – who mutually congratulated each other. Meanwhile, no one greeted the opposition in the name of the national government.

The victory had a strong impact on the business community, which did not expect such a clear victory by the opposition in traditionally Justice Party districts. One of the novel aspects of Sunday’s elections was that many voters left party loyalty aside.

The Alliance won by seven percent in the province of Buenos Aires, the country’s largest voting district, with nine of the nation’s 22 million voters, as well as a traditional bastion of the Justice Party.

It was also victorious in the province of Santa Fe, on Buenos Aires’ northwestern border, another bulwark of the ruling party, and in the eastern province of Entre Rios and Chacos in the north.

The Alliance parties also triumphed in provinces where they ran candidates on their own. The UCR took the lead in Cordoba – central Argentina – and Rio Negro and Chubut in the south, and in southwestern Neuquen the victory went to Frepaso.

The Justice Party took Misiones (northeast), La Pampa (bordering Buenos Aires), Formosa and Santiago del Estero (north), La Rioja (northwest), and Santa Cruz (south), while former dictator Domingo Bussi, governor of the province of Tucuman, won in his district at the head of a provincial party.

The Alliance obtained its biggest victory in the capital, with 56.8 percent of the votes. It will also command a majority in the first legislature of the city, which is governed by the UCR’s Fernando de la Rua.

Pollsters had predicted that the welfare-based policies of Buenos Aires province Governor Eduardo Duhalde of the Justice Party would tip the scales in favour of his wife Hilda ‘Chiche’ Gonzalez. But in the end, the victory went to Alliance Senator Graciela Fernandez Meijide.

The ruling party’s resounding defeat in the province dealt a hard blow to Duhalde, who aspires to succeed President Carlos Menem in 1999. The capital awoke Monday morning with its walls plastered with posters of one of Duhalde’s main rivals within the governing party, Ramon ‘Palito’ Ortega.

Ortega, a former singer and former governor of the northern province of Tucuman, says that in the light of Sunday’s results, there are no longer any “obvious” Justice Party candidates to succeed Menem.

Fernandez Meijide interpreted the vote for the Alliance as a warning to a government “that does not include everyone,” and support for attempts to fight what she described as the government’s “absolutism.” It was also an expression of support for the construction of a real alternative for the 1999 national elections, she added.

The Alliance’s campaign platform stressed the defence of stability and democracy.

Voters apparently understood that message, said analysts, and were ensured that the hard-won price stability (when Menem first entered office in 1989, inflation had reached a four-digit figure) was not tied to the fate of any specific leader.

But the Alliance also proposed a new agenda with pending issues such as unemployment – around 17 percent – corruption, the crises shaking the education and public health systems, shrinking pensions, the growing gap between rich and poor, and the lack of an independent judiciary.

The Alliance criticised the government’s shortcomings, promised to strengthen democratic institutions, and called on civil society to participate in that task.

With the triumph still fresh, five opposition leaders – the winning candidates in the province of Buenos Aires and the capital, plus Buenos Aires Mayor De la Rua – faced the TV cameras to broadcast an unusual message which resembled a publicity ad.

“We need to broaden the Alliance’s base to include lower- income sectors and business. Only by expanding that base will be be able to instrument the changes demanded by society,” said Federico Storani, Meijide’s replacement in Buenos Aires.

The most heated speech against the ruling party came from Frepaso’s triumphant Buenos Aires candidate. Deputy Carlos Alvarez warned that “there are no longer invincible parties” in Argentina and that “omnipotence and discretionary power are finished.” No longer will a select elite get rich at the cost of widespread poverty, he contended.

Pork-barrel politics is over, said Alvarez, alluding to Duhalde, who was wrong – he added – in believing that the candidacy of his wife, who administers a large-scale social charity programme, would be a key to triumph.

But he added that Alliance leaders did not believe the vote should be interpreted as a definitive backing for the coalition, which must now demonstrate its ability to become a real alternative in the 1999 elections.

“In advanced countries, there are no shake-ups when there is alternation in power. But in backwards countries, presidents believe they are monarchs, and the party is confused with the nation,” said Alvarez, in an allusion to Menem.

“The Alliance is a coalition with open borders. We hope to welcome all men and women who want to participate in building this new alternative, with the only exception of those involved in Menemist corruption,” he concluded.