ARGENTINE PRESIDENT PROPOSES MOVING UP LEGISLATIVE

UNCLAS BUENOS AIRES 000285 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PHUM AR SUBJECT: ARGENTINE PRESIDENT PROPOSES MOVING UP LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS BY FOUR MONTHS TO JUNE ¶1. (SBU) Summary: Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (CFK) announced March 13 that she will ask Congress to change the date of this year's national legislative elections from October 25 to June 28. To do so, Congress needs to change the election law by March 28. CFK argued that she wanted to move up the elections so that the country could address the global economic crisis undistracted by election politicking. It would be "suicidal," she said, to keep Argentina in suspense until October. Opposition comment so far has been largely, but not entirely, negative. End Summary. ¶2. (SBU) With former president Nestor Kirchner at her side, CFK made her announcement in the southern province of Chubut, one day after Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri said he was calling city council elections for June 28. CFK used Macri's announcement as another argument for moving up the national congressional elections, and she urged provincial governors to synchronize their local elections with her proposed June 28 date. (In another noteworthy element of her extemporaneous remarks, CFK once again blamed the "First World" for the global crisis that threatened to victimize Argentina and undo much of the economic progress that Argentina had made since its 2001-02 crisis.) ¶3. (SBU) Argentine electoral law currently stipulates that elections will be held the fourth Sunday of October (which this year would be October 25). Experts interviewed on television said that changing the election date would require the approval of an absolute majority in Congress (or 129 votes in the Chamber of Deputies and 37 in the Senate). The electoral law also requires that elections be convoked with 90 days' advance notice. That means that, for elections to be held June 28, the legislative fix would need to be completed no later than March 30. ¶4. (U) The opposition's initial reaction was negative, but not uniformly so. Margarita Stolbizer of the Civic Coalition (CC) and Senator Gerardo Morales of the Radical Party (UCR) appeared side by side on television to denounce the Kirchner move as harmful to the country's institutionality. They rejected CFK's use of the global crisis as a justification for "breaking the rules," and asserted that clear rules are central to a democracy. Stolbizer criticized CFK's failure to consult the opposition before making her decision and announcing it, and Morales said it was another example of the Kirchners' penchant for controversy and conflict rather than consensus. Morales said the surprise announcement was a sign of Kirchner desperation, and that Nestor Kirchner "had lost his mind" due to his defeat in Catamarca's March 8 provincial elections. The initial reaction by the other significant vector of the opposition, the "dissident Peronists," was more muted, with Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri and congressional deputy Francisco de Narvaez indicating they did not agree with moving up the elections but were prepared to go along with it if approved by Congress. Comment -------------- ¶5. (SBU) As post has noted before, the Kirchners love to make surprise announcements. They succeeded in catching most everyone off guard with this one: there were no advance leaks or rumors of the move, and our hunch is that they saw an opening in Mayor Macri's March 12 announcement of city council elections on June 28 and made their own decision in less than 24 hours. The Kirchners are likely seeking to shift tables on the opposition and disrupt or short-circuit any gathering momentum for opposition leaders in the wake of Nestor Kirchner's setback in the province of Catamarca (see Buenos Aires 0255). The opposition's diverging reactions remind one of how divided it is. The instantaneous interpretation of some embassy contacts is that the Kirchners decided to move up the elections because trend lines in the polls indicate that their public support will only decline with time as the Argentine economy deteriorates through the course of the year. The change in election date needs to be approved by Congress, however. It is very much an open question as to whether the Kirchner administration has the votes to prevail. WAYNE