/UPDATE/ELECTIONS-ARGENTINA: Peronism Loses ‘Monopoly’ Over Poor

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 22 1999 (IPS) - Argentina’s governing Justice (Peronist) Party, created by Juan Perón in the 1940s, has enjoyed the solid backing of the poor for half a century.

And even though the socioeconomic conditions of the lowest- income sectors have worsened in a decade of government by President Carlos Menem, the ruling party is expected to once more draw a majority of votes from that segment of the population in Sunday’s elections.

However, analysts point out that the poor will no longer vote for the Justice Party en masse – which helps explain the 15-point advantage enjoyed in the opinion polls by opposition candidate Fernando de la Rúa, whose platform has focused on social development policies.

Manuel Mora y Araujo, the head of the polling firm Mora y Araujo y Asociados, said “the Justice Party lost its virtual monopoly over the poor.”

Nevertheless, as in the past, many workers and day labourers will vote Sunday for the governing party candidate, Eduardo Duhalde, whose approval ratings stand at around 30 percent, compared to De la Rúa’s 45 percent.

Perón, who died during his third term in 1974, supported the social integration of Argentinians who flocked from the provinces to the outskirts of the capital in search of jobs. The new residents of the greater Buenos Aires became workers enjoying a broad range of labour rights and social benefits.

But the Peronist or Justice Party has changed since the times of Perón, especially in 10 years of government under Menem, becoming a vehicle for free-market policies.

And the most pressing social problem today is unemployment, which has soared to nearly 20 percent under Menem, and currently stands at 14.5 percent.

The middle class, which has traditionally formed the social base of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) – founded in the late 19th century – prefers the opposition Alliance, a coalition created just two years ago by that party and the centre-left ‘Frente País Solidario’, which has fielded De la Rúa’s candidacy.

Finally, Domingo Cavallo, the presidential candidate for the small Action for the Republic party – a former economy minister under Menem and architect of the currency board system which pegged the peso to the dollar and contributed to reining in inflation – is running third in the polls, with a strong foothold among the wealthy.

Most voters expected to back Duhalde are poor, with just primary school education, while voters with more schooling prefer De la Rúa, according to the latest survey by Gallup Argentina.

Opinion polls indicate that around 54 percent of those holding university degrees will vote for De la Rúa, and just 16 percent for Duhalde and 13.4 percent for Cavallo. Meanwhile, 39.2 percent of the lower-income sector say they plan to back Duhalde, and 37.8 percent De la Rúa.

A majority of women have expressed their support for De la Rúa, whose platform has emphasised gender equality, in contrast with Duhalde, who has expressed support for more traditional roles for women.

But beyond the general trends, the tendency to vote across party lines is growing, as political allegiances weaken, say analysts.

“People vote freely today,” said Roberto Bacman, director of the Centre for Public Opinion Studies. “They vote more for the candidate than for the party, and more than 30 percent say that on Sunday they will choose the presidential candidate from one party and candidate for governor from another.”

Rosendo Fraga, director of the New Majority polling firm, concurred.

While “the vote for Duhalde predominates among the lower classes, for De la Rúa among the middle, and for Cavallo in the upper-middle and upper classes,” a coalition cutting across social lines is essential to winning elections.

Fraga cited the alliances that brought UCR candidate Raúl Alfonsín to power in 1983 and Menem in 1989 and 1995. Neither candidate could have won simply with the support of their parties’ traditional constituencies.

In 1989, Menem had the backing of the Peronists’ long-time supporters, the lower and middle income sectors. But he gradually lost ground among the middle class, while making headway among the wealthy, who approved of his neoliberal economic policies, and supported him in 1995.

De la Rúa has also apparently been successful in drawing support from a cross-section of society, while Duhalde has failed to do so, say analysts. Not only the middle classes, but also business sectors and lower-income voters disenchanted with the ruling party are expected to back the opposition Alliance’s candidate.

“The new poor, as the lower middle class that has fallen below the poverty line due to shrinking incomes, has been dubbed, is a sector that fluctuates widely, but whose voting behaviour could determine the final outcome,” said Marita Carballo, director of Gallup Argentina.

Mora y Araujo pointed out that the 30 percent of voters with the lowest incomes had backed the Justice Party as a bloc up to 1997.

That support base cracked, however, when Graciela Fernández Meijide, running for the Alliance, won the legislative elections for the province of Buenos Aires, governed by Duhalde, where the Justice Party had emerged triumph in elections for the past 12 years.

Today Fernández Meijide, a human rights activist whose son was forcibly disappeared by the 1976-83 de facto military regime, is the Alliance’s candidate for governor of the province of Buenos Aires, home to around 40 percent of the country’s voters.

On Sunday, 24 million voters in this Southern Cone country of 35 million will elect a new president – for a four-year term – and vice-president, 116 parliamentary deputies and the governors of six of Argentina’s 23 provinces. They will also choose among candidates for 1,500 provincial and municipal posts.