FT: Argentina poll promises another Peronist incarnation
Benedict Mander in Buenos Aires
Since Juan Domingo Perón rose to power 70 years ago, the idiosyncratic political movement the working class hero founded has dominated politics in Argentina.
Three of the six candidates running in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday are Peronists, and one, Daniel Scioli, is widely expected to gain the most votes and the chance to bring Peronism another four years.
The winner will have to deal with a difficult economic legacy of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Peronist incumbent, who with Néstor Kirchner, her late husband and predecessor, ruled Argentina for the past 12 years. That legacy includes dwindling foreign exchange reserves and one of the highest inflation rates in the world.
“It’s true that the economy is stagnant. But Argentina has suffered very serious economic crises in the past,” says Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst.
“So the problems of today really don’t seem so bad to Argentines,” he adds, pointing to the 2001 economic crash that led to what was then the biggest sovereign debt default in history.
Since Perón formed the movement seven decades ago, Peronists of wildly different political stripes — from the free-market right to the interventionist left — have come to power. But throughout that time Peronism has been marked by a strong appeal to the working class and a distinct strain of populism.
Nevertheless, victory is not assured for Mr Scioli, the moderate governor of the province of Buenos Aires who preaches continuity and gradual reforms. His main rival, who is campaigning for wholesale change, is Mauricio Macri, the market-friendly, centre-right mayor of the city of Buenos Aires.
Although no pollster disputes that Mr Scioli will win the most votes on Sunday, there is little consensus over whether he will gain enough to avoid a more unpredictable run-off vote on November 22.
To win outright, a contender needs 45 per cent of the vote or 40 per cent with a 10-point lead over the runner-up.
Most polls show Mr Scioli within a hair’s breadth of winning 40 per cent, with Mr Macri close to 30 per cent, making the outcome too close to call due to polls’ statistical margin of error.
“In the 32 years since Argentina regained democracy, I have never seen an election this close,” says Carlos Germano, a political analyst.
The key battleground, he says, is the province of Buenos Aires, where a population of 17m represents 38 per cent of the vote.
Daniel Scioli
Buenos Aires governor and presidential candidate for the ruling Frente para la Victoria (Front for Victory) party, Daniel Scioli, waves during a rally in Quilmes, Buenos Aires Province, on October 20, 2015. Argentine will hold general elections on October 25, in which for an outright winner the candidate needs 40 percent of votes and a 10-point lead ahead of the runner-up. Otherwise, it will head to a runoff on November 22.
About Scioli
Born into a middle-class family, Daniel Scioli negotiated his brother’s release from leftwing guerrillas when he was 18. But it was his sporting career that brought him fame. After losing his right arm in a powerboat racing accident in 1989, he went on to win world championships. Elected to congress in 1997, Néstor Kirchner chose him as his vice-president in the 2003 elections.
The largely working class province around Buenos Aires city is traditionally Peronist territory but Aníbal Fernández, the Peronist candidate for governor, is expected to hold back Mr Scioli on the national scene.
That is partly because of sensational allegations that Mr Fernández, known as “the Walrus” on account of his bushy moustache, masterminded a series of grisly murders so he could take control of an ephedrine trafficking ring.
Mr Fernández, previously one of the president’s top officials and confidants, denies the allegations, which he depicts as a political smear.
Mr Scioli is the anointed successor of a president who is leaving an economy stricken by alleged economic mismanagement and a downturn in the commodities cycle. But most voters see him as the candidate best placed to fix Argentina’s problems, which also include a fiscal deficit of 7 per cent gross domestic product financed by printing money.
Many Argentines are still suspicious of the neoliberal economic policies characteristic of the 1990s that they fear Mr Macri would embrace to kick start the economy.
Amid fears he would not make it to the second round, Mr Macri attempted to woo undecided Peronists fed up with the economic woes by unveiling a statue of Perón in a square in Buenos Aires city this month.
Mauricio Macri
Presidential candidate Mauricio Macri speaks during a rally in Lanus, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, October 21, 2015. The Argentinian ruling party's candidate Daniel Scioli is primed to win the presidential election outright on October 25, with a commanding lead over his nearest rivals, two polls published in local papers on Sunday showed. His closest rival, Macri, the center-right mayor of Buenos Aires city, is seen getting 28 percent of the vote in the election, according to the poll.
The son of an Italian business magnate says it was a 12-day kidnapping ordeal at the hands of corrupt police in 1991 that convinced him to go into politics. First, though, he spent a decade running the Boca Juniors football club. He turned to politics in 2003 and later became a congressman before being elected in 2007 as mayor of Buenos Aires.
In third place with about 20 per cent support, Sergio Massa, the dissident Peronist, is further complicating Mr Macri’s ambitions by telling voters he has a better chance of defeating Mr Scioli in a second-round vote.
It is Argentina’s divided opposition that cleared the way for the Kirchners’ self-proclaimed “victorious decade”, which saw the economy’s revival after the collapse of 2001.
Since then, the party in power during the crisis — the Radicals, traditionally Argentina’s other main political force — has failed to regain public confidence, fading from this year’s presidential race early.
José Octavio Bordón, a former presidential candidate and provincial governor, says 15-20 per cent of voters remain undecided, with “none of the presidential candidates inspiring either great enthusiasm or great fear”.
“The coin has been tossed, but it’s still in the air,” Mr Bordón adds.
