By Guillermo Háskel
Herald staff
 
A political reform likely to be passed before President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sees her grip on Congress slacken in December is a bold move by her husband Néstor Kirchner to possibly run again for president in 2011, but it entails high risks, observers and opponents say.

Virtually the whole arch of the opposition and even government allies voted against the bill that the Lower House passed last week by 133 votes against 99 and four abstentions.

It was passed with the support of some opponents, after the government introduced many changes to the initial bill. Its passing by the Senate is widely seen as a matter of course as the Kirchners hold there a larger majority than in the Lower House.

Critics of the bill say that it is  tailor-made for Néstor Kirchner to revive the country’s traditional bi-party system to have the Radical party as “weak sparring” and, together with other recent laws passed in Congress, favour a possible new presidential candidacy by him.

The cornerstone of the initiative is the re-introduction of mandatory, open and simultaneous primaries that the Kirchners’ Peronist party ignored in 2003 and that allowed Néstor Kirchner to become president in 2003 and his wife to succeed him in 2007.

Observers, congressional and farm leaders talking to the Herald said that the move may backfire as the primaries allow for anyone to vote in the primary of any party and hence many of the 70 percent of voters who voted against the “ruling couple” in the June mid-term election could vote in the Peronist primary to favour any rival of Néstor Kirchner. But some also see Néstor Kirchner as having good chances.
Pollster and observer Felipe Noguera said that the Kirchner move may be highly risky.

“The control of the party machinery always gives politicians a plus in a primary, but let’s not forget that in the large Peronist primary of 1988 Carlos Menem beat the party machinery that was controlled by Antonio Cafiero.”

Oscar Aguad, the head of the Radical Party Lower House’s caucus told the Herald that Kirchner mistakenly underestimates the weight of the primaries being open. A similar concept was vented by Eduardo Buzzi, one of the four main leaders of the farm sector that is locked in a fierce dispute with the government since March last year over export duties.

“This reform is tailor-made for a presidential candidacy of Néstor Kirchner, but he is underestimating society, and people at large will punish him in the Peronist primary,” Buzzi told the Herald.

Observers agree that the dispute with farmers, coupled with a deep economic crisis and rising crime, has been a key factor in the defeat of the Kirchner in June.

Noguera cautioned that the possibility of non-Peronists voting in the Peronist primary to oppose Kirchner should not be overrated. “People may not be that interested in voting in the primaries of parties that are not their own.”

Observer Ricardo Rouvier, who has been working for the government, agreed. “People can cast just a single ballot and I don’t see voters at large using their vote in some other party’s primary.”

There is a wide consensus among the opposition that by means of the political reform Kirchner is seeking to force potential rivals, namely ex-president Eduardo Duhalde, deputy Francisco de Narváez and Senator Carlos Reutemann, to compete within the party. The three have said that they may challenge Kirchner in the primary and even run for the presidency.

Rouvier said that today Kirchner would “easily” beat his former mentor Duhalde. “Kirchner today would win the primary and not only because of his control of the party’s machinery or because some non-Peronists may vote in the Peronist primary. Duhalde’s only stronghold is the province of Buenos Aires.”

Rouvier said that Duhalde may not finally run and, instead, throw his support behind some other candidate such as former Economy Ministry Roberto Lavagna. It was Duhalde who helped Kirchner become president in 2003.

Rouvier said that the political reform casts troubles for the centre-right Unión-PRO alliance formed by dissident Peronists De Narváez and Felipe Solá, and Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri.

De Narváez may finally opt for participating in a Peronist primary but Macri is not a Peronist and would most likely refuse to do so, something that could mark the end of their alliance, he said. De Narváez came as the main winner in the June vote.

Argentina’s political system is extraordinarily atomized. There are more than 700 parties, but only 33 of them have national legal status and, among them only two have a strong territorial presence: the Peronist and the Radical parties.

Although the 44 Radical deputies voted against the bill last week, many of them are actually exultant regarding a reform that could restore their traditional role as the country’s other major party.

Many opposition leaders say that the Radicals only voted against the reform because they were sure that the Peronist-led Victory Front of the Kirchners had enough votes to pass it.

A source in the Radical National Convention, told the Herald. “We are more than happy with this reform, only that, of course, we cannot say so in public.”

National Convention Chairman Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen has been always a harsh critic of the Kirchner, saying, for instance, that some of their confrontational practices resemble those of Nazi Germany.

However, when asked by the Herald whether he thought, as many argue, that the Kirchners want to impose the open primaries to force society at large to solve the Peronist infighting, he only attempted a mild criticism. “Who knows, may be. Not for nothing they are trying to pass the reform in such a haste. But I don’t like to meddle in other parties’ internal affairs.”

A large sector of the Radical party is pinning its hopes on Vice-President Julio Cobos, a man who abandoned the party to side with the Kirchners in 2007 but that in the middle of the conflict with the farmers turned his back on the Kirchners and is in his way to be readmitted into the Radical flock once he completes his mandate. He is enjoying a high positive image.

Ever since democracy was restored in Argentina in 1983 after a bloody seven-year military dictatorship, Radicals have been suffering heavy political blows. The late Radical President Raúl Alfonsín was forced to hand over power to Menem five months ahead of schedule in 1989 amid a nightmarish hyperinflation outburst and the Radical-Frepaso Alliance of Radical President Fernando de la Rúa crumbled mid-way its four-year term amid the country’s worst-ever economic meltdown in late 2001.

Two weeks later Duhalde was appointed caretaker by Congress but the crisis was so deep that after police killed two pickets, Duhalde, fearing that the situation could run our of control, called early elections which, with his support, were won by Néstor Kirchner, the man he now wants to dethrone.

Smaller parties criticized what they say is an attempt to kick them out of the race, while the Radicals remarkably targeted more the “haste” with which the Kirchners are seeking the approval of the bill.

“The government is in a hurry because majorities in Congress change in December,” Aguad said. “To the smaller parties I say that they are wrong if they believe that a two-party system can be ushered in by means of a law,” Aguad added in his speech before the Lower House the day of the vote.

“A two-party system is but a natural outcome of society. It is society, not laws, who prevail. The Radical Party in 1983 won 52 percent of the vote (when Alfonsín was elected). With the same electoral law, 20 years later, it obtained two percent of the votes (when Kirchner won in 2003),” he added. “The Radical Party has always supported diversity. It is far from seeking to pass a system that may not be accepted by society.”

Others, chose to target other aspects of the bill.

Civic Coalition deputy Juan Carlos Vega a constitutional and criminal law expert, told the Herald that when he criticized the absence of clauses to ensure that there will be no corruption, Peronist party trustee and deputy Jorge Landau replied: “You are only right, but we don’t care what you say.”

Other criticism targeted the fact that when considering reasons for inability to run for posts, the bill traces it back only to March 24, 1976, the day of the coup against Perón’s widow María Estela Martínez de Perón. Critics of the Kirchners argue that state-terrorism actually started under the third presidency of Juan Domingo Perón in 1973.

It was precisely Solari Yrigoyen who became the first victim of state terrorism when a bomb planted in his car by the AAA right-wing death squad led by Perón’s secretary José López Rega went off in November 1973. Perón died in July 1974 and was succeeded by his third wife. López Rega died in prison while facing charges that he was the leader of the AAA.

Critics of the Kirchner say that the political reform is part of a wider plan to ensure Néstor Kirchner’s candidacy and that includes the nationalization last year of the AFJP private pension system, an extension this year by Congress of superpowers for the government and the passing last month of a media-antitrust law mainly targeting the Clarín media conglomerate, a move widely seen as aimed at gagging the press. Also, critics of the Kirchner say that a recently introduced subsidy for children will favour patronage by mayors in charge of distributing them.