The comeback bid
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The comeback bid

Nestor Kirchner may have suffered a bruising electoral defeat last summer, but he is still determined to use the coming months to bolster his position for a presidential run

There’s a Spanish word for it. Gatopardismo. Making changes so that nothing changes at all. And former Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, after a major defeat of his ruling party in the June 28 legislative elections, appears to be preparing a comeback to restore his status quo.

Kirchner, president from 2003 to 2007 and succeeded by his wife Cristina Fernandez, the current president, was mauled by the voters. Although his faction within the Peronist Party won 30.8% of the total votes, it lost in every major district and city. He promptly resigned as the



Peronists’ leader.

The new Congress will not assemble until December 10 when Kirchner will formally cede his majority in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, though he still wins a seat in the Province of Buenos Aires because of proportional voting rules.

For a few weeks after the trouncing, the now widely unpopular deputy Kirchner disappeared from the public eye. Many Argentines took this as a sign that he was licking his wounds and would return a changed man – a collective delusion based on the assumption that Kirchner would see the writing on the wall of the electoral results and recent public approval ratings.

Official polls at the beginning of September showed that the index of confidence in the government has fallen more than 20% this year – and 10% in August alone. However, three months after the debacle, Kirchner is back in the ring fighting like the heavyweight he once was.



Wrong

Those citizens who hoped that the Kirchners would return to the halls of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, ready to listen to differing views and negotiate solutions to formidable problems – above all the conflict with the agro-industrial sector – were quickly disabused of their optimism.

In the three months following the election, the Kirchners have aggressively deployed their loyalists to pass major legislation extending, for example, the executive’s ability to rule by emergency decrees. A new law on agricultural export taxes was unanimously approved by the Congress and the Senate, in which some 27 counties in the Province of Buenos Aires would get temporary tax relief due to the damage caused by the country’s worst drought in over 100 years.

The tax forgiveness was controversial as, according to many, it was unconstitutional – but it did have undeniable legislative support. Cristina Fernandez as president vetoed it.



Ball play

Most recently the executive proposed a law revising the system governing the award of television channels. This along with other questionable elements, included turning over all rights to televise soccer matches to a state-controlled channel, which will be subsidized for some 600 million pesos a year for 10 years.

In addition, the law is based on an accord with the Argentine Football Association, which has claimed that the funds will keep many smaller clubs from going bankrupt and disappearing. According to Maria Eugenia Estenssoro, a senator in the opposition Civic Coalition and a former journalist, the administration is using the law to gain popular support without having considered important questions like how it will be regulated.

Few are against a rethink of the current legislation passed under the military dictatorship, but the project is unconvincingly justified by the government as an anti-monopoly policy, the logic being that making it free will also make soccer viewing more democratic.

Critics – even those in favour of a new law – are concerned about issues of press freedom and fear that the consequences will be more ownership of valuable profit-producing businesses by close friends of the president and her husband. Moreover, many in the journalistic community see it as revenge against Clarin, the country’s most influential paper and the owner of several TV franchises.

These examples reveal that the Kirchner transition strategy, before their loss of full majorities in both chambers, is more of the same.

Political analyst Rosendo Fraga, director of the Union for a New Majority, reckons the couple would rather lose than negotiate or share any modicum of power. This does not bode well for a smooth two years before the October 2011 presidential election, and if Fraga is right then Nestor Kirchner will make every effort to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.



Back on track

The resurgence of Nestor Kirchner as a contender has been the result of many factors, not least his determination and the fear that he inspires among almost all other forces: businessmen, pundits, journalists, politicians and government officials. But the opposition has also allowed him to put them up against the ropes. Divided, riven by egos, personalities, betrayals and an absence of coherent, well articulated ideas, it has become the facilitator of the gatopardismo that Kirchner hopes to embody.

Timing has also favoured Nestor’s comeback. In the days immediately following his electoral defeat, many expected a flood of Kirchnerists to sidle towards the opposition, especially dissident Peronists led by wealthy businessman Fernando de Narvaez, former governor Felipe Sola and Mauricio Macri, mayor of Buenos Aires. It didn’t happen. With a number of important provinces and municipalities desperate for national resources, it is too early for them to risk having government money withdrawn.

As the 2011 elections draw closer this may change dramatically. Off the record, many local leaders admit that they cannot hope to be re-elected if they appear to be associated with the Kirchnerists. And behind every calculation over the Kirchners’ future lies the phantasm of their stepping down, condemning the country to yet another major political fiasco. Ever since Kirchner made that threat last February following the defeat of the administration’s proposed increase in export taxes, its power to intimidate has remained firm – and may be the Kirchners’ remaining trump card.

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