O U R  A M E R I C A

Havana.  August 22, 2013

Argentina
Frente Para la Victoria consolidated

THE government Frente Para la Victoria (FPV) confirmed itself as the principal political force in Argentina by winning the most votes in the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Obligatory (PASO) elections on August 11. The 26.31% of votes for deputies and 27.45% for senators reinforced the political party led by President Cristina Fernández in an exercise which is the prelude to general legislative  elections on October 27, when half of the Chamber of Deputies (127 of 257 seats) and a third of the Senate (24 of 72 seats) are to be renewed.

More than 30 million electors were convened to these elections to decide the parties that are to participate in those of October and their candidates. This was also the second time in Argentina’s electoral history that the PASO system was used, given that the first experience was in 2011, when the President swept to victory and her reelection.

The FPV, which has 112 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 34 in the Senate, should increase these to 114 and 36, respectively, according to official figures. Obtaining a majority in both chambers is extremely important in order to continue advancing the process initiated by Néstor Kirchner and maintained by his wife, Cristina Fernández.

Among the innovations was the first-time vote of 592,344 youth aged 16-17 years (2% of the electoral roll) after the Chamber of Deputies approved Law 26774, on October 31, 2012, thus facilitating their vote. Another particularity was that, this time around, Identity Documents were not stamped as evidence of vote casting, given that these have been replaced by a printed stamp with electors’ details and a unique and non-transferable barcode. For Fernández, “this reaffirms the democracy under which Argentines have lived for 30 years.”

In his article, “What lies behind the elections in Argentina,” Guillermo Almeyra affirms that the recent primaries, “were a test of the President’s popularity and her capacity to pull in votes for her Party.” and also a pre-selection of potential pre-candidates for the 2015 presidential elections, both for the opposition and the governing Party.

ELECTION DETAILS

Many detractors of the governance of FPV and its allies, among them corporate media groups, highlighted the ground the Party lost to the so-called dissident Peronists, symbolized by the Frente Renovador (FR) and its representative, Sergio Massa, mayor of Tigre, a new opposition figure.

The journalistic coverage given by this sector of the media, highly unbalanced, focused on the FR victory in the Buenos Aires province, with 35.05% to the 29.33% pf the FPV candidate, Martín Insaurralde, mayor of Lomas de Zamora.

Argentine journalist Emilio Marín describes Massa, former head of the Cabinet of Ministers from 2008-2009, as a character who, “more than being of the center is veering along the right-wing track,” and whose image as a “young, serious politician, with management skills, who walks in the middle of a broad and national avenue without fighting with anyone,” lost support on account of “his clearly oppositional definitions.”

The corporate media, which in countries such as Argentina is another political actor, only superficially covered the electorate’s little interest in the ultra-right Unión Propuesta Republicana (PRO). Only 3.3% of Argentines opted for the proposals of the PRO, a fact which left it in sixth place within the country’s political ranking. In the Federal Capital, the PRO lost to the center-left coalition UNEN – formed in the context of these primaries – which won 35.38% of the vote.

Meanwhile, the independent left-wing forces were left notably split. Although the Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, made up of the Partido Obrero, el Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas and Izquierda Socialista, obtained promising results, other formations were left out of running for not attaining the established 1.5% of votes cast.