30/10/2013
Guillermo Hirschfeld is FAES Coordinator for Latin American Programmes
Previous analyses of the legislative elections of October 27 stipulated that for an initiation of political change in Argentina the polls were to show the following results:
1) That Sergio Massa, former chief of staff of Cristina Fernandez, now representative of the Peronist opposition, should win by a margin of nearly 10 points in the province of Buenos Aires.
2) That Gabriela Michetti, the candidate of the PRO, party led by Mauricio Macri; Hermes Binner, Social Democratic leader of the province of Santa Fe; and the radical Julio Cobos in Mendoza, should get comfortable victories in their respective districts.
3) That the opposition should win in the five largest constituencies of the country: Autonomous city of Buenos Aires, province of Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe and Mendoza.
4) That the official candidate to the Senate, Daniel Filmus, for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, should not achieve the necessary votes to enter the Senate.
5) And that by adding the votes of the ruling party candidates, they should obtain not more than 30 points throughout the country.
The same analyses predicted that if all this happened, the collapse of the Kirchner regime would be inevitable. Well, all the conditions for the change to start have taken place except the last one, because the votes obtained by the Front for Victory have exceeded 30 points in the country as a whole.
Faced with the desire for change, doubts arise and a much more complex scenario than one might think starts to emerge. With a president who is ill, an Administration without leadership, a chaotic economic management, a fragmented opposition and a ruling party which still retains a strong electoral floor, questions arise both on the ruling side and the opposition.
How will the ruling party manage the next two years? Will it lock itself in its most radical positions, believing perhaps that that way it will manage to retain that consistent electoral base, or will it moderate itself resorting to an inland Peronist candidate with a national scope, perhaps Urribarri or Capitanich? A preliminary interpretation by the exegetes of the Kirchner account could be that some votes at one end escaped for the benefit of far-left parties, which have gained more electoral support than in the past. Under this logic, they might think to that to go out hunting for that electorate would be profitable.
However, it would be a risky move because the ruling party preserves a moderate electorate which, before the radicalisation of the project, would chose other more temperate options. It would also cause internal friction in the party which would do nothing but erode its political capital.
On the side of the opposition, in the case of Sergio Massa and his project, the question is whether we are witnessing a new 'gattopardismo' within Peronism, or if it is a real assumption of the importance of institutionalism in a Constitutional Republic. Secondly, the question raised by the progressivism embodied by Hermes Binner, Julio Cobos and the historic UCR is whether they will be able to privilege what unites them rather that what separates them, and thus form a strong political force. As for the PRO and Mauricio Macri, the question is whether they will have the skill and strength to establish themselves before the country as the alternative which represents change, and thus manage the possibility of a second-round victory in the presidential election of 2015 where the presence of Cristina Fernández seems more unlikely every day, since the constitutional reform, imperative to run again, is now impossible.
Last but not least, still pending to see is whether Argentina's society will be capable of taking their due responsibility and actively demand the political class a strong democracy with viable political alternatives to initiate a peaceful transition toward normalisation and progress.