ARGENTINE MID-TERMS: RADICALS AND CIVIC COALITION

C O N F I D E N T I A L BUENOS AIRES 000729 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/19/2029 TAGS: PGOV PREL ECON AR SUBJECT: ARGENTINE MID-TERMS: RADICALS AND CIVIC COALITION EXPECT GAINS NATIONWIDE BUT LITTLE TRACTION IN GREATER BUENOS AIRES REF: A. BUENOS AIRES 0698 ¶B. BUENOS AIRES 0558 ¶C. BUENOS AIRES 0470 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Tom Kelly for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Argentina's center-left alliance of the opposition Civic Coalition (CC),Radical Civic Union (UCR), and Socialist parties is likely to gain congressional seats nationwide in June 28 elections. Their campaign, however, has not caught hold in either Buenos Aires city or province, where it has trailed behind the ruling Victory Front and PRO Union alliance. This development may impact the anticipated post-election jockeying for leadership between the CC's Elisa Carrio and former Radical and current Vice President Julio Cobos. End Summary. ¶2. (C) With one week of campaigning left, voters in the city and province of Buenos Aires have apparently not been convinced to support the clear non-Peronist alternative in this election, the Civic Coalition (CC)-Radical Civic Union (UCR)-Socialist ticket. The CC, UCR, and Socialists are running together in Buenos Aires Province and in several electoral districts throughout the country. One exception is Buenos Aires City, where the CC and the UCR are aligned in the "Civic Accord" without the Socialists. In other locations, the parties are going their own way. Although much diminished since the dramatic departure of former President De la Rua at the height of the 2001-02 economic crisis, the UCR continues to have party structures throughout most of the country. The Substantive Parties? -------------- ¶3. (C) Major campaign themes for the UCR and CC have included a good governance agenda of anti-corruption and investment in education. Their debating points and speeches include critiques of Peronism for its failure to alleviate poverty, describing it as a system for buying poor voters with insubstantial hand-outs. Lead Buenos Aires city candidate Alfonso Prat-Gay, a former Central Banker, has provided significant economic depth in discussions. As a politician, however, he has come across on occasion as the newcomer that he is. ¶4. (C) Despite their ability to "talk policy," UCR and particularly CC leaders have tried their hands at rougher politics as well, pushing hard the idea that the Peronist "dissidents" and the "PRO" party of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri are not really an alternative to the ruling party but cut from the same cloth as the Kirchners and other Peronists. CC party leader Elisa Carrio, who was the runner-up in the 2007 presidential election with 23% of the vote, took the third spot on the CC-UCR slate of congressional candidates for the federal capital to bolster the sagging chances of her protege, Prat-Gay. She has insistently alleged that pro-Kirchner and "dissident" Peronists will rejoin forces after the election. ¶5. (C) To emphasize their standing as the "true" opposition, the CC and UCR commonly refer to the "two Peronists" and campaign posters in the province tout that "sure change" comes with voting for the Civic Accord. Carrio has ramped up her public appearances in the capital area, launching criticisms of Union-PRO ticket leader Francisco De Narvaez for presumably violating campaign spending limits in his lavishly funded campaign. ¶6. (C) Stolbizer pushed hard the weekend of June 20-21 to allege that there was a plan to reunite the Peronists and Peronist-dissidents after the election. De Narvaez responded strongly, saying the story was a fabrication and that he "would not even walk to the corner" with Nestor Kirchner. Perhaps seeing an opportunity to diminish de Narvaez's vote by bolstering the Civic Accord among anti-government voters, Buenos Aires Provincial Governor Daniel Scioli, number-two on the PJ ballot for Buenos Aires behind Kirchner, hinted that the story was true and that the Peronists might unite after the election. He went on to praise Stolbizer as a "qualified leader" and Alfonsin as a "respected man." ¶7. (C) Political statements from CC leaders at times appear to critique the public as well for not accepting their program. In a mid-June inter-party dialogue, BA provincial party candidate Margarita Stolbizer, atop the list of Civic Accord candidates, emphasized her commitment to honesty in government. She then related the comments of a journalist who told her that honesty in Argentine politics "does not sell." Carrio, for her part, warned on June 18 that Argentina was in danger of becoming a "fascist state" because the public was not thinking critically; she lamented the popularity of the political lampoons on the "Big Brother-in-Law" television show for having replaced real political discussion. Modest Numbers in Buenos Aires City and Province -------------- --- ¶8. (C) In a mid-June Poliarquia poll published in newspaper "La Nacion" June 21, the Civic Accord (CA) ticket of Margarita Stolbizer and Ricardo Alfonsin (son of the recently deceased former Radical President) attracted the preference of only 13.2% of respondents. The increasingly polarized battle between the pro-government Peronist ticket of former President Nestor Kirchner and Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli (30.0%) and dissident Peronists Francisco de Narvaez and Felipe Sola (Union-PRO, at 32.5%) appears to have taken the wind from any alternatives. Other recent polls, which put the two leaders in a dead-heat or show a slight advantage for the ruling FpV, all show the CA trailing distantly. Indeed, de Narvaez has launched a campaign to attract votes from the UCR-CC, advertising that only a vote for his ticket will be "useful" for defeating former President Kirchner (septel). ¶9. (C) One Radical Party official told Political Officer June 17 that de Narvaez was spending prodigiously, and that the populous, poorer neighborhoods of greater Buenos Aires were traditionally Peronist strongholds. He suggested that the Civic Accord would receive significant support from the rural areas (still recoiling from the government's protracted, bruising conflict in 2008 with the agricultural sector over agricultural export duties) and small towns of the province. Perhaps most indicative of the relatively ineffective CA campaign in the province is that 41% of voters had no opinion of Stolbizer (compared to just 12% and 2% respectively for De Narvaez and Nestor Kirchner). ¶10. (C) In Buenos Aires city, the outlook for the CC-UCR alliance is less propitious than had been anticipated. In this race, Mayor Mauricio Macri's center-right "PRO" party fielded a ticket headed by former Buenos Aires city Deputy Mayor Gabriela Michetti, which has the support of 32.7% of those surveyed in early June by Poliarquia, well above the 18.4% going to the Civic and Social Accord list headed by former Central Banker Alfonso Prat Gay. (The pro-Government ticket of Carlos Heller trailed in forth place with a notably small 11.1%.) Although she is only the number-three candidate on the CA's city ticket, CC leader Elisa Carrio's photograph is used on most advertisements. To some degree, she will be associated with the June 28 results in the city. Although the city of Buenos Aires has long been considered a bastion of support for Carrio, an unpublished poll conducted June 11-18 by highly regarded Ipsos Mora y Araujo surprisingly had her ticket tied for third place with the Kirchners' FpV slate headed by banker Carlos Heller, each with 10% of the intended vote in the capital. In first place was PRO-Union's Michetti, with 25% of the vote, followed by maverick upstart, leftist cinema director Pino Solanas with 11% of the vote. ¶11. (C) The coalition, however, is doing better in many provinces, either operating together or separately. In Rosario, Socialist candidates backed by popular Governor Hermes Binner could well place first in the vote, possibly beating the dissident Peronist ticket headed by Senator Carlos Reutemann. Both Binner and Reutemann are frequently mentioned as presidential contenders for 2011, though only one of them may retain such prospects after June 28. UCR candidates in Chubut, Corrientes, and other far-flung locations expect to hold or win new seats, fueled in part by the farm sector's lingering fury at the government of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Carrio has been doing much campaigning nationwide as well and has encouraged public attention to national, rather than Buenos Aires, results in assessing her campaign. Carrio has traveled to Cordoba to back front-running Senatorial candidate Luis Juez, who is expected to defeat the Kirchner-backed Eduardo Accastello. The UCR is running separately in Cordoba and also has a strong base there. Vice President Rankles Radical, CC Leadership -------------- ¶12. (C) In the midst of the campaign, Vice President Julio Cobos' June 10 meeting with De Narvaez, at which he expressed his solidarity with de Narvaez against a smear campaign linking de Narvaez to illicit trafficking in ephedrine (Ref A),drew harsh critiques both from pro-government candidates and from the UCR and CC. Both Elisa Carrio and Margarita Stolbizer spoke strongly against the meeting as evidence of Cobos' sympathy for Peronism. (Note: In April, the popular Cobos was officially invited to return to the Radical Party once he finishes his term as Vice President, per Ref B.) Although Cobos is quietly supporting regional candidates in alliance with the UCR-CC coalition in places such as Buenos Aires, he also has his own independent candidates in other locations. ¶13. (C) Cobos insisted that his meeting with De Narvaez was similar to a Vice President's non-partisan meetings with all comers; he also noted that Carrio herself had spoken against the apparent government-directed campaign to discredit De Narvaez. Still, the widely published photo-op of Cobos and De Narvaez struck many CC and UCR leaders as another example of opportunism by Cobos. A Battle for 2011 -------------- ¶14. (C) One Radical Party insider said intense divisions within the CC-UCR coalition stemmed from the rivalry between Carrio and Cobos for the 2011 presidential nomination. He described a third group, mostly Radical Party members, as largely bystanders to this conflict, including Alfonsin. Just as the CC-UCR coalition results in Buenos Aires city will reflect to some degree on Carrio as a candidate, so to will the performance of Cobos' candidates in his home province of Mendoza (Ref C). (Comment: The bitterness of the Cobos-Carrio rivalry might pave the way for a compromise candidate -- such as Hermes Binner, the Socialist governor of Santa Fe -- to be the coalition's nominee for president.) Comment: Peronism Still Dominant -------------- ¶15. (C) Although the Radicals, Civic Coalition and Socialists may well increase their representation through the mid-term vote, a fundamental story of this election is the continued political dominance of Peronism in the vote-rich Province of Buenos Aires. By encompassing a broad range of political philosophies (all "populist", but with views ranging from hard left to right-of-center),the Peronist movement is perfectly capable of turning on incumbents and championing "change" from within its own ranks. This formula is muddled somewhat in Buenos Aires city, where the "PRO" movement of Mayor Mauricio Macri seems to straddle a line as a non-Peronist alternative with roots in Peronism (and in league with dissident Peronists). Since the discrediting of the de la Rua government in 2001, the Radicals and other non-Peronist parties have not been able to seriously challenge the Peronist choke-hold. They may come much closer in this election, but will likely be overshadowed by Francisco De Narvaez, Mauricio Macri, and Carlos Reutemann. KELLY