Argentina in 2009

Argentina in 2009

Area: 2,780,400 sq km (1,073,520 sq mi)
Population (2013 est.): 41,348,000
Capital: Buenos Aires
Head of state and government: President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Buenos Aires protests
Demonstrators bang pots in front of the obelisk in Buenos Aires on April 18, 2013, as part of widespread protests against high inflation, corruption, crime, and other problems that continued to plague Argentina.

In 2013 Pres. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s hopes of reforming Argentina’s constitution to allow her to seek a third term in 2015 were dashed. Rampant inflation and crime combined with dissatisfaction with Fernández de Kirchner’s authoritarian governing style to hand the president a severe setback in midterm congressional elections, leaving her far short of the two-thirds majorities of both houses of the National Congress required to call a constitutional convention.

On October 27 elections were held to renew one-half of the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the Senate. Fernández de Kirchner’s Front for Victory (FPV) and its allies were opposed by a patchwork of different opposition parties and alliances across Argentina’s 23 provinces and in its autonomous Federal District. In some districts the principal opposition was provided by politicians who, like the president, belonged to the Peronist movement, whereas in others the main challengers were members of non-Peronist parties such as the country’s traditional counterweight to Peronism, the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Three weeks prior to the election, Fernández de Kirchner underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from her brain. She was placed on a strict regimen that required 30 days of bed rest, and her infirmity prevented her from actively participating in the home stretch of the FPV’s campaign.

The most visible and important election took place in the pivotal Buenos Aires province, where 39% of Argentines resided. The FPV ticket was headed by the president’s handpicked candidate, Martín Insaurralde, mayor of the Buenos Aires suburb of Lomas de Zamora. Insaurralde’s main rival was Sergio Massa, Fernández de Kirchner’s former chief of cabinet ministers and mayor of suburban Tigre. Massa and his dissident-Peronist Renewal Front list handily defeated Insaurralde and the FPV 44% to 32%. Massa’s decisive victory made him an instant front-runner for the 2015 presidential race.

The FPV suffered similar defeats in Chamber contests in the country’s four other most populous districts, which together accounted for 28% of Argentina’s population. In the Federal District the FPV placed third with 22% of the vote, behind both Mayor Mauricio Macri’s Federal Proposal (35%) and the non-Peronist UNEN alliance (32%). In Córdoba the FPV ran a distant third, its 15% of the vote easily eclipsed by the dissident-Peronist Union for Cordoba, led by Gov. José Manuel de la Sota (27%), and the UCR (23%). In Santa Fe the FPV finished third with 23%, far behind the non-Peronist Progressive Front (42%), which had governed the province since 2007. Finally, in Mendoza the FPV was dispatched 48% to 27% by the UCR list of Julio Cobos, the vice president during Fernández de Kirchner’s first term. The FPV even lost badly in the president’s home province, Santa Cruz.

In all, the FPV and its allies won only one-third of the popular vote, 47 of 127 contested Chamber seats, and 14 of 24 Senate seats in play. Thus, Fernández de Kirchner began her final two years in office with bare majorities in both the Senate (39 of 72 seats) and the Chamber (132 of 257 seats).

During 2013 Argentina continued to suffer from high inflation, estimated at between 25% and 30%. Meanwhile, a growing shortage of U.S. dollars in the government coffers resulted in increasingly restrictive currency and import controls as the year progressed. In November Fernández de Kirchner reshuffled her cabinet, but she seemed determined to maintain the same economic strategy.

Mark P. Jones