Politics, candidates would like to think, is about the good guys defeating the bad guys. But in reality it mostly comes across as a loud argument between flawed guys (and gals). Think about the governor of South Carolina. But hey, be fair, politicians are human beings. What needs to be as flawless as possible is the system. Unfortunately Argentina's system, like guys and gals, is neither good nor bad; it is flawed. A faulty system comes with turmoil attached. It's been pretty much the state of things here since about 1930.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner, have been trying to turn a political corner and leave the perpetual state of crisis behind. Fernández de Kirchner won the presidential elections in 2007 comfortably enough. But last year the Kirchners gambled a lot of their political capital on a bruising standoff with the farmers over a plan to increase the export duties on soybeans. The Kirchners have a lot at stake today. Yet look through the dust that Argentina's flawed system always kicks up come election time and what you see is that the future of Peronism as a party is also at stake today.

Kirchner, who is running for the Lower House of Congress in Buenos Aires province, is the chairman of the Peronist party. Yet his rival Francisco de Narváez, a candidate for the centre-right coalition Unión-PRO, also calls himself a Peronist. Kirchner and De Narváez are heading for a showdown to control working-class Greater Buenos Aires, a Peronist stronghold. Yes, technically the election is about renewing half of the Lower House and a third of the Senate. But symbolically, especially on election night, it is about the outcome of the Buenos Aires province vote.

All right, you say, this sounds simple enough. Kirchner and De Narváez are two warring Peronists. No, sorry. It just isn't that simple. De Narváez, a wealthy businessman with limited political experience and a newcomer to Peronism, has tried to reach out to non-Peronist voters. He is following the advice of his main ally: City of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the leader of PRO.

The Social and Civic Accord (a front which includes the Radical Party and Elisa Carrió's Civic Coalition) in the last days of the campaign tried to drive home the notion that Kirchner and De Narváez are one and the same and that many of the elected lawmakers will join forces in Congress. It is a strategy that worked in Santa Fe where Governor Hermes Binner, a leader of the Socialist Party, has hurled similar accusations at Senator Carlos Reutemann, a Peronist seeking re-election who last year severed ties with the Kirchners during the row with the farmers.

De Narváez, who is backed by a group of dissident Peronists including former governor Felipe Solá, has flatly denied the allegations that he could ever play on the same team with Kirchner (and so has Reutemann). It is Kirchner and Carrió, De Narváez has counterattacked, who are one and the same because they both treat their rivals as sworn enemies who must be crushed. Yet De Narváez's move has reportedly disgruntled some dissident Peronists who originally backed him in Greater Buenos Aires and were dropped by the businessman at the last minute. There is speculation that those Peronists, who are experienced and know the ground, could work against De Narváez today in Greater Buenos Aires.

Political parties need legions of scrutineers to monitor the election in Greater Buenos Aires to counter the muscle of the Peronist party, which is currently mostly controlled by Kirchner and Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli, who is also a candidate to the Lower House.
Carrió chortled at the notion that she could ever be game to a deal with Kirchner. "I would never side," she said, "with the chief of a bunch of crooks." There you have it.

Come Monday Carrió was accusing De Narváez of being part of a Peronist conspiracy with Kirchner. De Narváez meanwhile was likening Carrió to Kirchner. Yet, ironically, it was Macri who gave the ruling Kirchnerites something to work with just when the election in Buenos Aires province was looking too close to call. A week ago Macri, a business executive with a conservative background who rarely talks about policies and ideology, declared that he favoured privatizing the pension funds and the airline Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Congress, prodded by the Fernández de Kirchner administration, approved the takeover of the AFJPs private pension funds and Aerolíneas Argentinas late last year. The AFJPs were not especially popular because they charged hefty fee for managing worker's retirement money. The funds, about 23 billion dollars, are now controlled by the state-run administrator ANSeS. Aerolíneas Argentinas, until last year controlled by a private Spanish company, was heavily in debt when it was nationalized. So why start talking about privatizations when your candidate, De Narváez, is performing well in difficult territory?

Good question. You come up with the answer. The thing is that the ruling party in this last week of the race reacted with a spree of negative campaigning on television, accusing De Narváez and Macri of wanting to make the nation swallow the neoliberal recipes of the 90s. Argentina crashed politically and financially in 2001 and many blame the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the "neoliberals" for the devastating crisis.

The policies of the 90s were championed by then president Carlos Menem, a Peronist who went neoconservative when he took office in 1989. Because Menem turned Peronism into a conservative party between 1989-1999 and Kirchner now calls it ‘‘progressive,'' there is a feeling that the party's next ideological hue will depend on who wins today in Buenos Aires province (and also Santa Fe, Córdoba and Mendoza).

Since 2003 Argentina has rebounded economically. This campaign had been mostly about personalities. All candidates were trying to come across as nice guys. Voters, many of them shellshocked by so many crises, looked like they had no time for ideology. Pundits spent a lot of time speculating about the impact on the election of Big Brother-in-Law, a comedy television show in which all the major candidates are impersonated.

The race was about charisma. Take the situation in the City of Buenos Aires. Gabriela Michetti, Macri's candidate, is the front-runner. But in the last days of the campaign, especially after his assertive performance in a television debate, the surging sensation was veteran filmmaker Pino Solanas - a dissident Peronist to the left of the Kirchners who favours sweeping nationlizations.

Nationalization? Did someone say nationalization? Yes, Solanas. But not only Solanas. De Narváez said in an interview with the daily Clarín on Wednesday that he favours nationalizing the utilities MetroGas and Edesur and the oil company YPF (originally state-run and privatized in 1991).

This was puzzling talk by what is technically a centre-right candidate. Not even Kirchner is currently championing the takeover of a giant such as YPF. Kirchner, possibly sensing that De Narváez was trying to limit the damage done by Macri, started to throw some punches. De Narváez, Kirchner said, "is desperate because he knows he will lose." Michetti initially tried to dodge the controversy by stating that nationalizations were not a key campaign issue. Yet eventually, perhaps prodded by her own party, she declared that what PRO favours is the efficient monitoring of the state of private companies.

Michetti has also said that it is not vital to have a standing agreement with the Peronist party to run the country. Michetti, on the issue of how to deal with the Peronist party, seems to differ from De Narváez (and possibly even Macri). De Narváez has said that he will seek to clinch control of the Peronist party if he defeats Kirchner.

The question is whether the negative campaigning and the privatization issue - plus the contradictions in Unión-PRO - will be enough to carry the day for the Kirchnerites today in Buenos Aires province. De Narváez also said in the interview that public works should be limited to prevent an economic crash. Kirchner, speaking at a rally to close the campaign in La Matanza, also pounced on this comment. Public works, he told the crowd, creates thousands of jobs and are needed to fit poor neighbourhoods with sewers.

Kirchner's recipe also seems to include using ANSeS new fat wallet to rescue Argentine-owned private companies in trouble. The government, Kirchner announced on Tuesday, is ready to rescue dairy giant La Serenísima, which is reportedly gearing to sell to France's Dadone. Kirchner made the comments on visiting a La Serenísima plant in General Rodríguez, Buenos Aires province. But the company, which owes 230 million dollars and lost 265 million pesos last year, is said to still be in negotiations with Dadone.

The business community - like the economy in general - seems to be sending out mixed signals at the moment. French carmaker Renault has announced it will invest 500 million pesos on a plant in Córdoba province. The state-run statistics bureau INDEC, which critics say manipulates data, has insisted that the economy is not in a recession. The economy in April increased two percent year-on-year, the bureau reported on Tuesday. Yet even INDEC acknowledged that demand for temporary workers dropped 28 percent year-on-year in March. Industrial output in April dropped 1.2 percent, INDEC said.

Business executives right now seem to be thinking what many observers are thinking. Argentina has a political problem, which no leader seems to be able to solve. Héctor Méndez, the head of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), said as much on Monday. "The political crisis," he said, "is bigger than the economic one." Elementary, my dear Méndez. It's not the economy, but the politics (stupid). The ruling party, after the elections, is likely to have a much harder time controlling Congress even if Kirchner wins today. The President, who has a popularity rating of about 30 percent, will have to deal with the challenge of trying to rule until 2011 with a hung Congress.

So, back to the elections. Will the ideological row over nationalizations settle the contest in Kirchner's favour? Possibly. But the argument was not clear-cut because a million other things were going on during the last week of the hard-fought campaign. Voters only seem to pay attention to the race in the last week, which makes the final days of the race all the more crucial.

Vice-President Julio Cobos, a dissident Radical, was photographed in Mendoza province on Tuesday with Ricardo Alfonsín, a Lower House candidate for the Accord in Buenos Aires province. Cobos, who famously sided with the farmers against the Kirchners last year, is endorsing opposition Radical candidates in Mendoza, his home province. Cobos has said that he will seek to run for president if his candidates win today. But did the picture mean that Cobos is backing the Accord or that Alfonsín will back Cobos' presidential bid?

Cobos telephoned Margarita Stolbizer, the head of the Accord list in Buenos Aires province, to offer his best wishes on Wednesday. Yet there is speculation that Cobos and Carrió are already at odds to clinch the endorsement of the Radical party for the presidential elections of 2011. Will Alfonsín, the son of the late president Raúl Alfonsín, side with Cobos?

Kirchner, like he has done throughout the campaign, at Thursday's closing rally blasted Cobos for backing opposition candidates. Kirchner, in a swipe at the media group Clarín, also insisted that the ruling party will go ahead with a plan to reform the media law. The government argues that the law's amendment is designed to quash monopolies.

De Narváez's strategy meanwhile, sensing that Solbizer is in trouble, is to portray himself as the only option that opposition voters have to defeat - and thus humiliate - Kirchner in Buenos Aires province. Turnout, De Narváez has said, will be a key factor today. De Narváez, while Kirchner was addressing Peronist militants, was canvassing also in La Matanza, the sprawling district in the heart of Greater Buenos Aires where 800,000 voters live. (A total of 10,335,398 voters live in Buenos Aires province. There are 27,789,273 voters nationwide.)

De Narváez has also used words like "fraud" and "violence" to describe what could happen today. The National Electoral Court issued a statement on Thursday underlining that the executive and Congress had done little to improve voting conditions after the irregularities reported in the presidential elections of 2007. Opposition parties in 2007 complained that ballots were stolen from voting stations, especially in Buenos Aires province.

The court said that the outcome of the presidential election was not affected by the irregularities. But on Thursday the Court made a point of saying that tonight's provisional vote count will be managed exclusively by the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry accused the press of trying to manipulate the Court's statement. The ministry has said that the Court is the highest authority of the election and is in charge of the final vote count. If the election is tight and the Interior Ministry-managed provisional vote count slow, there is an outside chance that the night could degenerate into an ugly brawl between rival political parties without a clear winner and no concession speeches (especially in Buenos Aires province).

Luis D'Elía, a militant Kirchnerite activist from Buenos Aires province, had called a demonstration in Plaza de Mayo for tonight. D'Elía cancelled the call when he was overruled by Justice Minister Aníbal Fernández, after opposition leaders complained that you can't stage a celebration before you know the outcome of the election. Yet other ruling party leaders with direct access to Kirchner, including Deputy Carlos Kunkel, have said that they will march on Plaza de Mayo after voting stations close at 6pm today.

This election is about choosing lawmakers. Yet on the night it is also about Kirchner's political future. Symbolically, the decision of which road the Peronist party will take next lies squarely in the hands of the 6,242,615 voters that live in working class Greater Buenos Aires. But look out. The nation - and the Peronist party - could plunge into a deeper identity crisis if both Kirchner and Reutemann are defeated.