Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09BUENOSAIRES729
2009-06-23 12:57:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Buenos Aires
Cable title:  

ARGENTINE MID-TERMS: RADICALS AND CIVIC COALITION

Tags:  PGOV PREL ECON AR 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXYZ0003
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHBU #0729/01 1741257
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 231257Z JUN 09
FM AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3913
INFO RUCNMER/MERCOSUR COLLECTIVE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/HQ USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
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).

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