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Analyzing the 2003 Argentine Elections

Now that the presidential elections have been decided, have the Argentines put their crisis behind them?

Date & Time

Wednesday
May. 28, 2003
3:00am – 5:00pm ET

Overview

“Argentina at the Wilson Center” organized a meeting on the recent presidential elections in Argentina. In a scenario marked by highly fragmented traditional parties and an atomized electorate, Argentines voted for a new President on April 27, 2003. Nestor Kirchner, governor of Patagonia’s province Santa Cruz and former two-term President Carlos Menem, both peronists, were to meet in the second round. However, as polls projected that more than 70 per cent of the vote would go to Kirchner and that Menem would face a crushing defeat, Menem decided to withdraw from the ballottage. As a result, Kirchner assumed the presidency last May 25th on the basis of the 22 per cent of the votes he had garnered in the first round.
The extent to which this percentage will condition Kirchner’s mandate as well as the impact that this will have on the Peronist party was discussed in the meeting by both Argentine and American specialists. Political analyst Rosendo Fraga thought Kirchner could turn the conditions to his advantage if he understands that he should lead a culture change where consensus and alliance will be the basis for democratic governance. “It is necessary to change the culture of the strong, personalistic leader” that has been part of the Argentine politics since the XIX century and especially since the 1940’s. Taking a different view, Mark Falcoff, of the American Enterprise Institute, also pointed that this mandate could be the beginning of more performance-based presidencies which would show that Argentines have matured and that politics in that country are changing. Argentine pollster Graciela Romer also argued that after four years of economic recession Argentines have realistic demands and that in order to sustain governance it is important that politicians start responding to the citizenship’s demands. “To sustain governance not only is it crucial to maintain horizontal, transversal alliances but to have also vertical legitimacy.”
Historian Carlos Floria said that the most challenging thing that this president faces is the construction of authority, while Santiago Canton, Executive Secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS) emphazised the need to focus on foreign policy coherence which should be based on the recognition of Argentine national interests and not on automatic alignments with any political/ economic bloc.

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