Cobos in July 2008 cast a Senate tie-breaking vote against a soybean export duty hike and almost downed President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the process. Now he has dropped out of the presidential contest. On Thursday Cobos, a Radical who raised eyebrows when he joined forces with Fernández de Kirchner to run together in 2007, announced that he had decided to “desist” in his bid. The decision came almost immediately after the Radical Civic Union (UCR) formally endorsed Deputy Ricardo Alfonsín as its presidential candidate earlier on Thursday. Because Argentina is a volatile nation with very frail institutions the politics here are usually very difficult to explain.
A vice-president voting against the wishes of the president in a crucial Senate vote while thousands of farmers protest with enough anger to topple the administration? A Radical vice-president (Cobos) on the same ticket with a centre-left Peronist president (Fernández de Kirchner)? What on earth is going on? What’s going on is that Argentina has been struggling to sort out its political crisis since about 1930 — that’s what is going on.
Cobos was practically an unknown quantity when in the wee hours of July 17 he cast his famous “non-positive” vote to effectively side with the opposition with millions watching on television. Cobos’ cheek — albeit after 40 minutes of dithering suspense — brought the opposition back to life. For the rest of 2008 Cobos, who had been expelled from the Radical party in 2007, could only be objectively described as the most popular politician in the land.
But that was back in 2008. The Radical party has since pardoned Cobos. Yet the problem in a nation with dysfunctional politics is that a lot of things will happen fast. And then there’s the impact of straightforward fate like when former president Néstor Kirchner, the President’s husband and predecessor, died suddenly of a heart attack in October at the age 60. The sudden death prompted a wave of sympathy for the President that seems to have consolidated into political support. Even before Kirchner died he was campaigning with grit and the Victory Front had the support of about 35 percent of the public. The President’s approval rating now stands at about 48 percent and according to polls it is growing.
You shouldn’t take all polls at face value here because many of them predicted Kirchner would win the midterm elections in Buenos Aires province of 2009 and then he was defeated by Francisco de Narváez, a centre-right dissident Peronist. Presumably Cobos gets to read polls that he trusts. The problem for Cobos is not the President’s popularity. The problem is that the polls that he has commissioned probably show that he is now performing so dismally that he has practically no chance of winning a presidential race even when it is scheduled for October. Cobos’ political problems probably started when, again in his capacity of Senate head, in January 2010 he found himself smack in the middle of a fierce dispute between the President and then Central Bank governor Martín Redrado over the executive’s decision to use the bank’s reserves to service debt. The President’s drive to force Redrado out landed in a three-man congressional commission headed by Cobos, who when all was said and done refused to back Redrado (as demanded by the opposition).
Cobos then was under pressure by the Radical officials backing his potential presidential bid to take leave of absence as vice-president to campaign. He refused to do so. Cobos made an interesting comment when, to use his word of choice, he “desisted” from running on Thursday. He said, not without a pinch of malice directed at the UCR leadership, that at last, now that he is not resigning, a Radical would serve out his mandate. Raúl Alfonsín, the Radical elected president in 1983, was forced to call early elections before the end of his six-year mandate in 1989 due to hyperinflation. Fernando de la Rúa, the head of the Radical-Frepaso Alliance ushered into office in 1999, quit the presidency during the infamous financial crash of late 2001. Cobos has a point.
Here is a Radical who will get to serve out his full mandate. It sounds anecdotal now. Who knows? The argument could serve him well in the future. But right here and now the UCR is officially endorsing Alfonsín (son of the late president). Cobos said on Thursday it is pointless to run against the wishes of the leaders of his own party (and the powerful nationwide machine that it controls). Cobos fate was probably sealed when the Radical governor unexpectedly lost the elections in Catamarca province on March 13 against the Victory Front candidate endorsed by Fernández de Kirchner. The Radical defeat in Catamarca was the first hard evidence that the President’s popularity is rapidly growing. Cobos tried to keep his options open by refusing to run in an early presidential primary called by the UCR for April 30 (his birthday).
The early primary was agreed on by Alfonsín and Senator Ernesto Sanz, the third Radical presidential hopeful. Cobos appeared to have made the right call when Sanz announced last week that he too was dropping out of the April 30 showdown he had initially agreed to with Alfonsín, alleging there was little support for the election. Technically Sanz can still challenge Alfonsín because according to the new electoral law approved in 2009 all political parties must hold presidential primaries on August 14 (open to all voters, not just members of political parties). Electoral court sources said on Thursday that the UCR’s decision to formally endorse Alfonsín means very little legally. But the UCR’s decision has a lot of symbolic weight, especially because Cobos and Sanz are trailing Alfonsín in polls.
It shows Alfonsín now has the Radical machine on his side. Alfonsín’s camp claimed the Radicals needed to nominate their candidate fast to then hammer out agreements with their allies, including the Socialist Party and the centre-left party GEN. That upset Radical defeat in Catamarca (and the Kirchnerite victory) is growing more significant by the minute. The centre-left Socialist Party could soon start asking itself if it should not lead the presidential ticket with a Radical as a running-mate. The Socialists have a potential presidential candidate in Hermes Binner, the outgoing governor of Santa Fe province. Santa Fe will hold gubernatorial primaries next month and Binner could actually find himself in a position to challenge Alfonsín, who is far less experienced than he is, in August for the presidential nomination of a Radical-Socialist coalition. Gubernatorial elections in Santa Fe are scheduled for July 24 and even when the Socialist Party has its own internal problems a win would leave Binner in an excellent position — especially with so many presidential hopefuls now performing badly and seriously thinking about dropping out. What is now unfolding is a battle in the opposition to see who will emerge as the leading presidential hopeful. As things now stand the only option for the opposition is to force a runoff against Fernández de Kirchner. Suddenly many opposition leaders are being terribly honest in public about the situation (to the dismay of much of the opposition press).
Former caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde, a dissident Peronist who fiercely opposes the government, has said almost desperately that the opposition does not stand a chance of winning the election if it fields too many candidates. The President, Duhalde has said, will win in October with 40 percent of the vote if the opposition is splintered. (A presidential candidate needs 40 percent of the vote and a ten percent difference over the nearest rival or 45 percent of the vote to win an election). Duhalde is calling for a “confederation of parties” to reach an agreement to stand a chance in the presidential elections.
Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the leader of the centre-right party PRO, has also said the opposition must agree on a “single” presidential candidate. But Alfonsín, Binner and Civic Coalition leader Elisa Carrió all so far find Macri unacceptable as an ally. It’s hard to imagine Binner and Carrió agreeing to a deal with Duhalde. The opposition is now trying to come up with imaginative electioneering to force a runoff. A landslide win for Fernández de Kirchner is not out of the question with polls showing that currently she even outperforms Macri in the City of Buenos Aires, where the Victory Front only garnered 10 percent of the vote in the midterm elections of 2009. (Fernández de Kirchner won about 24 percent of the vote in this city in the presidential elections of 2007, but polls now show she has about 35 percent of support.) Macri, a presidential hopeful, has called mayoral elections for July 10.
The expected runoff will be held on July 31. Macri will be under intense pressure from his advisors and party to seek re-election in a bid to protect his territory. Yet Macri insists that he plans to run for president. The question is if anything has the potential to ruin CFK’s popularity before the election. The Peronist party, which is largely controlled by the President, has a history of infighting when the going gets good. The President visited Córdoba province on Wednesday to head a rally designed to support Peronist Governor Juan Schiaretti and the likely ruling party candidate for governor José Manuel de la Sota. (Gubernatorial elections in Córdoba are scheduled for August 7.) Schiaretti, who served in the neoconservative administration of President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), was outraged when he was jeered by Kirchnerite militants attending the rally. But the infighting will only degenerate if and when the President’s popularity drops.
The CFK administration is meanwhile again locked into a fierce argument with Macri over Security Minister Nilda Garré’s decision to terminate the Federal Police’s contract with the city government to protect municipal buildings (including schools and hospitals). Will the drastic decision harm the President’s standing in this city? All municipal hospitals went on strike on Friday to complain about the lack of protection. Macri has also sued Garré and the Federal Police chief. Garré has said the contract will be terminated by May 6 because the police is owed money by the Macri administration.
The minister claims that the decision is part of a plan for more Federal Police officers to go on the beat. Garré was appointed in December after the squatting crisis at a park in southern Buenos Aires and has since purged the Federal Police, naming a new chief and sacking most heads of the city’s police stations. Macri has claimed that the new Metropolitan Police that he established recently can’t cope with protecting municipal building and has insisted that the Federal Police in this city must take its orders from the mayor and not the President as is currently the case. Garré prompted further debate when on Thursday she described the Federal Police as “the biggest problem” the CFK administration now faces, complaining about rampant corruption in the previous chiefs. Crime is the biggest concern for the public. Garré has argued the police could be part of the crime problem.
Argentina’s forces, including the Federal Police, have a terrible human rights record and can be unpredictable under pressure. Any one reporting something different is just trying to warp reality.
