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Too close for comfort
Buenos Aires Herald
June 21, 2009

Mart n Gambarotta.

Former president N stor Kirchner was in a mad mood on Monday. Kirchner, addressing a gathering of pro-government intellectuals in Buenos Aires, was especially angry at Clar n, the nation's biggest-selling newspaper. The US government has recently denied a report by the daily about complaints by Obama administration officials, purportedly voiced during a meeting with Argentine business leaders in Washington. Kirchner on Monday read out a statement condemning the story. His anger did not end there. Kirchner, who is married to President Cristina Fern ndez de Kirchner, also directed his wrath at Vice-President Julio Cobos. The President, Kirchner said, was unfortunate enough to have to put up with a disloyal Vice-President. Cobos, who is not a member of the ruling Peronist party but a dissident Radical who last year sided with the farmers during the conflict over a plan to increase grain export duties. Kirchner also lambasted Deputy Francisco de Narv ez, the Lower House candidate of the centre-right Uni n-PRO coalition in Buenos Aires province. De Narv ez, Kirchner said, should appear in court to answer questions about his alleged ties to a ring of ephedrine traffickers. De Narv ez has been summoned to testify by a judge. But De Narv ez, who is Kirchner's direct rival in the Lower House race, has accused the government of fabricating the case to frame him. None of this should raise eyebrows. Or should it? Kirchner, in a bid to woo moderate voters, had supposedly agreed to calm down. Yet on Monday he was defiant once more. "I am," he told his audience, "politically incorrect." While his rivals (including De Narv ez) have legions of campaign managers at their disposal, Kirchner has chosen to be his own spindoctor. Pollsters say that many voters are not interested in confrontation. People have been hit by so many crises, they argue, that they are now shell-shocked and would rather hear no crude political talk. But through most of the campaign Kirchner has behaved like a man on a crusade. He bashed Clar n, whose frontpage headlines have a huge influence on public opinion, again on Thursday accusing it of not being "independent" but part of the "opposition."

Clar n, according to Kirchner, is jittery because its "telecommunications monopoly" is at risk due to a bill the government is sponsoring to reform the business. Kirchner also furiously denied the story by Clar n (quoting an unnamed government source) that the ruling party plans to call early presidential elections next year if it loses next Sunday's midterm vote.

Kirchner sounds really angry. But how many voters are listening? It's not clear. For much of the race polls showed Kirchner holding a three- to five-point lead over De Narv ez, a wealthy businessman paying for his own campaign. Yet recent polls - or at least some of them - show a tighter race. The election, according to some polls, is now "a technical tie'' between Kirchner and De Narv ez.

Take this to be true at your own peril. Kirchner, who controls the party machine in Greater Buenos Aires province, is still very much the favourite to win. All sides are purportedly manipulating polls. But a win for De Narv ez would be a huge upset.

Yet the race, like many others across the nation, is much tighter than expected. That in itself is an upset. The Kirchners, and some of their rivals, had gotten used to walkovers. Fern ndez de Kirchner won the presidential elections in 2007 with 45 percent of the vote and with a 20 percent lead over her nearest rival. City of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the head of PRO, won the mayoral runoff with 60 percent of the vote. But things now look different. It is a hard-fought campaign. The ephedrine case against De Narv ez didn't stick. He has lasted the race - largely at the expense of the Social and Civic Accord. The Accord has accused De Narv ez of paying pollsters to come up with warped surveys. Yet Kirchner, by picking a fight with De Narv ez, seems to be doing the Accord (and the prospect of a divisive three-horse race) no favours.

The Accord (a centrist front that includes the Radical Party and Elisa Carri 's Civic Coalition) initially refrained from directly attacking De Narv ez. Yet its leading candidate in Buenos Aires province, Margarita Stolbizer, has now openly accused De Narv ez of having a secret deal with Kirchner to unite the Peronist party after the elections. De Narv ez was forced to deny the allegations yesterday, after reports surfaced that a Peronist member of his faction had met with Buenos Aires province government officials during the week. The notion that Kirchner and De Narv ez can ever play on the same team sounds far-fetched. But De Narv ez, following the advice of his spindoctors, during the last weeks of the campaign has shunned his Peronist backers in a bid to reach out to independent voters. If Kirchner carries Buenos Aires province, it's possible that many Peronists who backed De Narv ez will re-join the ruling party if they feel backstabbed.

Should the Accord have attacked De Narv ez sooner?

In Santa Fe province, the ruling Socialist Party throughout the campaign has accused Senator Carlos Reutemann, a Peronist seeking re-election, of planning to return to the party headed by Kirchner after the elections. Reutemann, a former governor, has openly defied Kirchner's authority as party leader and voted against the export duty hikes in the Senate last year.

The Peronist party is divided in Santa Fe because Reutemann has refused to run on the same ticket with Agust n Rossi, the head of the ruling party caucus in the Lower House of Congress who is seeking re-election. But the Socialists, headed by Governor Hermes Binner, have stuck to the line that Kirchner and Reutemann will end up being on the same side.

It has also suddenly dawned on Reutemann that he is paying a price for his rift with Rossi. "Our strategy," Reutemann has said, "is weak, we are divided." You don't say? Polls now show that Senator Rub n Giustiniani, the Socialist candidate, has a chance of defeating Reutemann. In Santa Fe, like in Buenos Aires province, the race is tighter than expected. The same can be said in Peronist-ruled C rdoba and in Mendoza (Cobos' home province). In C rdoba, polls show the candidate backed by Governor Juan Schiaretti trailing Luis Juez, a centre-left candidate backed by Carri (but not by the Radicals).

In Mendoza, Cobos has personally endorsed Radical candidates against the Kirchnerite Peronists backed by the local governor. The race is also unexpectedly close in Mendoza.

Defeat for Reutemann and Schiaretti would spell disaster for a faction of the Peronist party looking to unseat Kirchner as party leader before the presidential elections of 2011. Cobos has declared that his bid to run for the presidency hinges on whether his candidates win in Mendoza.

When the dust settles it is still very possible that Kirchner, Reutemann and Cobos's lot will win convincingly on Sunday. But the dust has not settled just yet because the race is still on. Look through the dust and what you see, with the vote but a week away, is a question mark hanging over the outcome of the elections in Buenos Aires province, Santa Fe and Mendoza. Only in the City of Buenos Aires does the election look easy to call. Former deputy mayor Gabriela Michetti, the charismatic candidate handpicked by Macri to lead PRO's ticket to the Lower House, is the clear frontrunner in this city.

Michetti feels so comfortable with herself - and her lead - that on Wednesday she agreed to a televised debate with her three main rivals: Alfonso Prat Gay (Social and Civic Accord), Carlos Heller (a Kirchnerite backed by the Peronist party) and Pino Solanas (a left-wing Peronist filmmaker critical of Kirchner). The debate was not spectacular enough to change the result, Michetti still looks like the winner. But it was Solanas - not the well-groomed economist Prat Gay - who made the most of the exposure. Solanas, the white-haired filmmaker known for his militant past in the Peronist movement, is now a political bubble unlikely to burst before the elections. Pollsters see all candidates, including Prat Gat, losing votes to Solanas - initially seen only capable of battling for third place with Heller.

Solanas' sensational surge - encouraged in part by those who would like to see Heller defeated - shows that some voters have no time for ideology. Solanas seems to be winning votes because he comes across as a decent man, even before you consider whether his plan for sweeping nationalization of the oil industry makes any sense. Congressional, elections after all, are often about personalities.

This midterm election has had a presidential feel to it, only because Kirchner has put the political future of the administration on the line calling the vote "a plebiscite." His rival De Narv ez (and much of the press) has only been too happy to play along with the plebiscite idea, sensing that Kirchner can be defeated.

Yet every campaign has its ideological moment. De Narv ez has said that if Kirchner wins the government will seek to take over banks and manage deposits.

Then Macri on Tuesday said on television that he favoured privatizing the airline Aerol neas Argentinas and the pension system. The nationalizations of Aerol neas and the AFJP private pension funds were approved by Congress last year at the request of the Fern ndez de Kirchner administration. The Kirchners reacted quickly by accusing Macri of championing the neoconservative economic policies which, they claim, were responsible for Argentina's crash in 2001. The neoliberals, the President said following Macri's comments, have been "unmasked." It's still not clear whether Macri made the comments to further polarize the election or simply spoke his mind without weighing the consequences. The AFJPs were not especially popular. Aerol neas Argentinas, which was managed by a private Spanish group, was originally a state-run company.

Macri, according to the Kirchners, made a mistake by condemning the takeovers. But maybe Macri was looking for an argument.

The President, her voice failing during a speech in Ezeiza yesterday afternoon, once again championed state intervention. She said that, thanks to the government, Ezeiza was one of the many districts booming.

Too good to be true? The economy will hold until the elections. But what will happen after that? Private economists have said in reports that Argentina is already in a recession. The INDEC state-run statistics bureau has reported that the economy grew only 0.1 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the last quarter of 2008 - technically that is not a recession.

But the government, with the fiscal surplus shrinking rapidly, is subsidizing about 84,000 workers for them not to be dismissed by companies.

The UOM metal workers union is currently in difficult salary negotiations. The Labour Ministry has been forced to call a compulsory conciliation to prevent a strike in the metal industry and companies were told to pay workers a 500 peso bonus while talks continue - after the elections.

In any case, every word uttered during the campaign counts. Alfredo De Angeli, a key leader of last years farmers' rebellion from Entre R os province, caused an uproar when he declared at a rally on Wednesday night that farm hands should be "loaded on trucks and told who to vote for." De Angeli, a member of the Argentine Small Farmers Federation (FAA) who recently canvassed with De Narv ez in Greater Buenos Aires, was forced to apologize. But was he really sorry? The farm hands, he said, "should be told who not to vote for." Even Eduardo Buzzi, the FAA's leader nationwide, condemned De Angeli's comments.

Weightless words are not the only factor in the election. Leading candidates can also lose votes to smaller parties, if these perform better than expected. Mart n Sabbatella, the leftist mayor of Mor n running for the Lower House, could take votes away from Kirchner.

Luis Patti, a former Buenos Aires police inspector who heads a rightwing party, was also technically a Lower House candidate who could take some crucial votes away from De Narv ez. But a court ruled on Thursday that Patti, who has been indicted for allegedly committing human rights abuses, cannot be a congressional candidate. The court said that the Lower House had already voted against allowing Patti as a member, saying he was "morally unfit" to take the seat he had won in the 2005 election.

Allowing Patti to run, the court said, would contradict the Lower House's decision in 2006.

Patti, who is yet technically guilty of nothing, has vowed to take his case all the way up to the Supreme Court. It's still not clear whether the Court will have no choice but to allow Patti to run while his appeal is considered. For months now the electoral courts have been busy dealing with a number of cases. A court has also ruled that Fernando Narv ez - a candidate with a surname almost like De Narv ez's - cannot run because the small party sponsoring him had pulled him out of the race.

De Narv ez had complained that the obscure Narv ez was only in the race to confuse voters.

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