POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Capital’s Runner-Up Admits Defeat

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 10 2000 (IPS) - Argentina’s former Economy minister Domingo Cavallo announced his withdrawal from the run-off vote for the capital’s powerful mayorship, two days after Sunday’s first round elections and the overwhelming victory of his rival, the city’s governing party candidate, Aníbal Ibarra.

Following a day of meetings with his supporters, led by Gustavo Béliz – also a former minister under president Carlos Menem (1989- 1999) -, Cavallo accepted his defeat, congratulated the winners, apologised for his harsh words and announced he would not insist on the May 21 run-off vote, even though he has the right to do so.

In Argentina, to be declared winner of a presidential race, a candidate must obtain 45 percent of the votes cast or a 10 percentage point advantage over the second-place candidate in the first round of elections. But in the capital, winning the mayorship requires 50 percent of the vote plus one, regardless of the percentage difference with the second-place candidate.

The Argentine capital was already in the hands of the centre-left Alianza party, which has also governed at the national level since Fernando de la Rúa took office as president last December.

The Alianza’s Ibarra won 49.4 percent of the vote to Cavallo’s 33 percent Sunday. Therefore, the law calls for a second round of ballots. But local political observers interpreted the magnitude of the first-round victory – just fractions of a point from directly winning the powerful mayoral seat – as an Alianza triumph.

Mayor-elect Ibarra has more experience in the judicial arena than in party politics, working as an attorney and later as a government prosecutor. He left that post in protest when then- president Menem pardoned the leaders of the military dictatorship (1976-1983) who had been charged with human rights crimes.

Cavallo was also a thorn in Menem’s side. As Economy minister he successfully beat back hyper-inflation and achieved price stability, but Menem also claimed responsibility for this “economic miracle,” leading to constant confrontations between the two, until Cavallo’s resignation in 1997.

A survey by the Centre for Public Opinion Studies, released Tuesday by ‘Clarín’ newspaper, indicated that 62 percent of the respondents wanted Cavallo to pull out of the run-off elections, compared to 33 percent who supported his continuing in the race. Even among the respondents who voted for Cavallo, 21.3 percent wanted him to concede defeat.

So Cavallo changed his attitude from midnight Sunday, when he insulted the winner using words such as cheater, lackey, inept and impotent. That night he also announced he would pursue the run- off, and repeated his intentions again Monday, though by then he had already begun to lose support.

With greater caution Tuesday, and Béliz at his side, Cavallo said he had taken into consideration that most of the electorate believes a second round would be a waste of time, and emphasised it would cost nothing to pull out of the race and begin work with his political coalition, which won 33 percent of the vote and additional seats in the city legislature.

He admitted it would be impossible to turn Sunday’s results around, but said he had thought at first it would be better to follow the provisions of the law that stipulate the conditions for a second round, which this situation met.

Cavallo also apologised for his over-zealousness, acknowledging that he had been mistaken in his suspicions that there had been cheating in the tabulation of the votes, adding that the official results had matched his own.

He explained that his frustration Sunday night was a result of the unprecedented delays in a district election. Election authorities, meanwhile, reported there had been technical problems so that the ballots had to be counted manually, but emphasised that this tabulation method did not impair the transparency of the electoral process.

The person responsible for Cavallo’s transformation Tuesday was apparently Béliz, his running-mate, who distanced himself from his partner’s confrontational attitude, but did not break ranks with their coalition.

Béliz opened a press conference Tuesday by congratulating the election’s winners and emphasising the important advances made by his own coalition, which doubled the number of votes it received compared to two years ago, giving it nearly as many legislators as the governing Alianza coalition.

Cavallo’s party, Action for the Republic, has 12 representatives in the national parliament. Now, as a result of Sunday’s elections, it obtained 20 posts in the city legislature compared to the Alianza’s 24.

Béliz, 38, said “in life there is a time to win and to lose, to sow and to reap, to work from the heights of power and from the lows,” adding that “the only one defeated is he who lowers his arms and gives up his ideals without a fight.”

He also attempted to erase suspicions of a future break with Cavallo by saying it has been a privilege to work with the former Economy minister, and emphasised the two would continue working together in the city legislature to carry their political projects forward.