POLITICS-ARGENTINA: ‘Representivity’ Crisis Persists

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 4 2002 (IPS) - The lack of credibility of Argentine politicians has reached such extremes that the number of voters who plan to cast blank ballots or to abstain from voting altogether is greater than the total who support the best-placed pre-candidate for the presidency, according to recent polls.

This week the government took advantage of increased confidence in Argentina’s financial system and signs of improved economic stability to lift the freeze on savers’ accounts imposed a year ago, but that confidence and stability has not translated over to the political arena.

All public opinion surveys show that the anger and rejection the Argentine people feel towards government leaders and political party leaders has not eased up in the last year, even though the massive street protests that prompted then-president Fernando de la Rúa to resign last Dec 20 – halfway through his term – have dwindled to only sporadic demonstrations.

In a poll conducted this month by the Ibope firm, with sights on the presidential elections slated for Apr 27, 22 percent of the respondents said they would leave the ballot blank or spoil it, or do not plan on casting a ballot, even though voting here is obligatory (though the 12-dollar fine is rarely enforced).

Running second place to those options, with just 15 percent of support from the electorate, is the leading pre-candidate for the presidency so far, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, former governor of the western province of San Luis and one of the contenders seeking to represent the ruling Justicialista (Peronist) Party.

The Ricardo Rouvier and Associates polling firm reports a similar panorama, as 26.3 of the people it surveyed said they would not vote for anyone. Just 14.2 percent said they favour Rodríguez Saá, who served a brief stint as Argentina’s interim president, Dec 23-30, 2001, after De la Rúa stepped down.

In the cases of both polls, if the number of respondents saying the would not vote for anyone are added to the "undecided" – around nine percent in the two surveys – it means that a third of the electorate does not feel represented by any potential candidate or party just five months ahead of the presidential elections.

The lack of participation at the ballot box and the electorate’s dissatisfaction in general were evident earlier this year in the gubernatorial elections in the province of Santiago del Estero, where the abstention rate was an unheard-of 51 percent.

"Setting the precedent for the low expectations related to the existing candidates are the years of democracy since 1983 (the end of the dictatorship) in which the electorate’s hopes were dashed," María José Lubertino, former lawmaker and current director of the Women’s Social and Political Institute, told IPS.

"The people lost their jobs and they grew poorer or became indigent, which is why they see politicians as letting them down again and again," commented Lubertino, a political leader who is more active in civil society than among the traditional party structures.

A study by the Centre for Public Opinion Studies conducted among voters who said they would not cast a ballot for any of the candidates found that 76 percent of respondents believe that politics is necessary to transform and improve the country, but 80 percent have a negative opinion on the politicians representing them today.

Lubertino commented that political parties or other types of social organisation are necessary for democracy. "It would be dangerous if the crisis prompted the emergence of candidates who are supposedly independent but in reality speak for small groups of economic interests," she said.

However, she maintains that the parties should be fomenting a truly representative system, one with mechanisms for direct democracy – such as public participation in drafting budgets -, transparent accounting by the government, and the removal from office of politicians who do not keep their promises.

Lubertino says she understands the electorate’s "political fatigue", which has been manifest lately in voters opting for "the lesser evil" among disappointing choices, but she warns about blank ballots or voter abstention, saying it could favour the continued power of those "who led us to this state of affairs."

Argentina is experiencing the worst social, economic and political crisis of its history.

Economic activity has been in recession for the last four years, unemployment reaches 21.4 percent and more than 50 percent of Argentina’s 37 million people are poor, several million of whom have fallen into poverty just in the last year.

Indigence and undernourishment continue to increase in this country that is among the world’s leading producers of food.

In recent years, political parties of an array of ideologies have passed through the Casa Rosada (government palace), but none has been able to halt the economic downslide. Worse, they are seen as contributing towards deepening the crisis, thus winning stronger rejection from the people, say experts.

After Peronist president Carlos Menem served two consecutive terms (1989-1999), 72 percent of poll respondents said they would "never" vote for him again. But Menem has already made moves towards launching another presidential bid and is garnering eight to 11 percent of voter support, according to recent polls.

In December 1999, De la Rúa – a leader of the left-leaning Radical Civic Union (UCR) – took office, backed by a formidable parliamentary track record.

The ruling Alliance, consisting of the UCR and the centre-left Frepaso at the time, initially generated a great deal of hope among the electorate that there would be a shift away from the neoliberal approach of the Menem government, as social indicators at the end of his term had worsened dramatically.

But the Alliance proved ineffective, and just two years into his five-year term, the country’s economic chaos and massive protests – which exploded into looting and violence – forced De la Rúa to resign.

He dragged the Alliance with him, bringing the UCR to its lowest support level in the party’s history, dividing the Frepaso and quashing the political aspirations of his Economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, who had received more than 10 percent of the vote in his 1999 presidential bid.

Cavallo, who De la Rúa tapped as the economy’s "saviour" in the middle of the crisis in early 2001, became one of the most reviled politicians after he imposed the so-called "corralito" (little fence), freezing the deposits of millions of savers nearly a year ago.

The banking curbs were lifted Monday on about six billion dollars in deposits, though around 4.5 billion dollars in fixed-term deposits remain untouchable.

The Peronists emerged from the crisis still standing and persuaded Congress to name Rodríguez Saá and then Eduardo Duhalde to replace De la Rúa and serve out his term.

Duhalde achieved only precarious stability for the Argentine economic indicators and the country maintains its default on foreign debt to private creditors. Now it is also heading towards default on payments due the multilateral credit organisations like the International Monetary Fund.

In this context, the traditional party leadership seems to have been eaten up by the crisis.

Nevertheless, the most active pre-candidates for April’s presidential elections come from the ranks of these same party structures, a fact that causes consternation among voters.

Luis Zamora, legislative deputy of the leftist Self-Determination and Liberty party, was one of the few politicians to remain at the political forefront but distant from the traditional parties.

But a month ago Zamora – with relatively strong voter support according to polls – announced that he would not run for president, saying it is "an electoral trap" that prevents the political system from changing.

Zamora urged his followers to "impugn the vote" as a form of protest so that all lawmakers, governors and municipal authorities be recalled from office.

The "negative" vote is gaining support, at least as a form of catharsis for the electorate’s discontent, given that most voters who are following this path acknowledge that their actions will not change things, at least not now.

POLITICS-ARGENTINA: ‘Representivity’ Crisis Persists

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 4 2002 (IPS) - The lack of credibility of Argentine politicians has reached such extremes that the number of voters who plan to cast blank ballots or to abstain from voting altogether is greater than the total who support the best-placed pre-candidate for the presidency, according to recent polls.
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