Originally published at ALAI AMLATINA, http://www.alainet.org/es/articulo/173228
26/10/2015.
Everything that habitually happens in
Argentina after an electoral date has
commenced. The battle of the day after started even before the electoral day
itself had ended. Everyone proclaimed themselves the winners. Sergio Massa
(Unidos por una Nueva Argentina [United for a New Argentina]), that achieved
third place, assumed himself the winner because it was the first time he stood
in a presidential election and he obtained a good result, 21.34%. Second placer
getter, Mauricio Macri (Frente Cambiemos [We Change Front]), with 34.33%, sees
himself with possibilities to be first. And the first place getter, Daniel
Scioli (Frente para la Victoria [Front for Victoria]), with 36.85%, forcibly
happy, because in the end there
wasn't any other option but to celebrate being the person who got the most
votes despite being far from what was desired.
With this panorama, what one can affirm is that up until this moment there still isn't a President. The first round only served to open the debate for the second round. In Argentina, one only wins in the first round if it happens that: 1) you get more than 45% of the votes, or 2) you get more than 40% and you have a difference of 10 points with respect to the second highest tally. Neither of these two situations has taken place. The country already thinks about a second round, the first time in history, on the 22th of November: the contest will be between the pro-government candidate Scioli and the conservative Macri.
The majority of the polls showed again
their incapacity to ascertain the electoral preferences in a country where
society has changed drastically in a few years. There hasn't been any poll that
has dared to predict a margin so narrow between both alternatives after that a
few months ago, in August, in the Obligatory and Simultaneous Open Primaries
(PASO), Scioli obtained 38.67% facing the 30.12% of Macri. What happened
between the PASO and what happened in this electoral conflict? What has
occurred with these more than 8 points of difference that has now converted
itself into only 2? What happened to the 54% that the President Cristina Fernández
de Kirchner (CFK) obtained in the previous presidential elections of 2011?
Some reasons to respond to these questions are the following:
1. The principal thing, undoubtedly, it that Scioli wasn't the best candidate of the Kirchnerist projects. During these months officialism tried to set up the idea that “the candidate is the project” as a formula, to combine the figure of Scioli with what Kirchnerism has been doing. All the evaluations of Kirchner policies and of the President were looking very positive (above 50%) in the recent months. It was so much like this that the the electoral tactic of the opposition wasn't characterised by confrontation. The campaign didn't focus on the nationalisation of YPF[1], or Aerolíneas Argentinas, nor the triumphant restructuring of foreign debt, nor on the public policies guaranteeing social rights. Scioli tried to capitalise on all of it, but he didn't manage to do it. He tried to be the candidate of the project, but he didn't achieve it. There was too much difference between the candidate and the project. Scioli isn't written with a K.
2. CFK didn't want to (or couldn't) be the determinant throughout the campaign. The President withdrew even since before it was established that Scioli was going to be the candidate. She scarcely participated in the campaign. She didn't managed build up a candidate more tailored to her either, more allied to the centre of Kirchnerism. She didn't have that fight; or she had it, but lost; or she believed that she didn't have a winning candidate in her ranks; or she trusted in herself believing that she could think about the next presidential contest without having won still this one. This “distance” of CFK from the elections has had a high cost. The figure of the Vice-President, imposed by the President, Zanini, appeared, at moments, to be a candidate from another party. More an ally than a running mate. The Kirchnerist proposal for the Province of Buenos Aires, Aníbal Fernández, wasn't correct in light of the results: he lost a Peronist bastion at the hands of the Macrista María Eugenia Vidal. In short, you can affirm that the President didn't add up to what was expected. It was so much so that for example her most symbolic and important organisation in these years, the Cámpora[2], didn't even attend the closing of Scioli's campaign. In politics, every detail counts. And this “attitude of distance”of CFK from Scioli has undermined and surely erroded more than what was predicted.
Some reasons to respond to these questions are the following:
1. The principal thing, undoubtedly, it that Scioli wasn't the best candidate of the Kirchnerist projects. During these months officialism tried to set up the idea that “the candidate is the project” as a formula, to combine the figure of Scioli with what Kirchnerism has been doing. All the evaluations of Kirchner policies and of the President were looking very positive (above 50%) in the recent months. It was so much like this that the the electoral tactic of the opposition wasn't characterised by confrontation. The campaign didn't focus on the nationalisation of YPF[1], or Aerolíneas Argentinas, nor the triumphant restructuring of foreign debt, nor on the public policies guaranteeing social rights. Scioli tried to capitalise on all of it, but he didn't manage to do it. He tried to be the candidate of the project, but he didn't achieve it. There was too much difference between the candidate and the project. Scioli isn't written with a K.
2. CFK didn't want to (or couldn't) be the determinant throughout the campaign. The President withdrew even since before it was established that Scioli was going to be the candidate. She scarcely participated in the campaign. She didn't managed build up a candidate more tailored to her either, more allied to the centre of Kirchnerism. She didn't have that fight; or she had it, but lost; or she believed that she didn't have a winning candidate in her ranks; or she trusted in herself believing that she could think about the next presidential contest without having won still this one. This “distance” of CFK from the elections has had a high cost. The figure of the Vice-President, imposed by the President, Zanini, appeared, at moments, to be a candidate from another party. More an ally than a running mate. The Kirchnerist proposal for the Province of Buenos Aires, Aníbal Fernández, wasn't correct in light of the results: he lost a Peronist bastion at the hands of the Macrista María Eugenia Vidal. In short, you can affirm that the President didn't add up to what was expected. It was so much so that for example her most symbolic and important organisation in these years, the Cámpora[2], didn't even attend the closing of Scioli's campaign. In politics, every detail counts. And this “attitude of distance”of CFK from Scioli has undermined and surely erroded more than what was predicted.
3. Scioli carries the weight of an administration of eight years in the Province of Buenos Aires (36% of the electoral roll), with his good decisions, but also with his mistakes. He has a presidential profile, but very distance to the epic, to the emotivity, of the Kirchnerist narrative. Scioli didn't manage to identify himself with the youthful impression that has so much characterised Kirchnerism in recent years. He is too much from the 20th century, perhaps, for 21st century politics. His discourse is surely typical of a more obsolete Peronism than that which Kirchnerism has been moulding. Besides, Scioli opted for scarcely confronting: he preferred to talk like he had already won. He accepted easily in this way the field proposed by Macri's advisers (especially of Durán Barba) of avoiding to dirtying himself in the boxing ring. And in politics, in the democratic electoral game, to win, you have to enter the arena, and fight, giving and receiving, with respect, but also cornering to the rival questioning him on every proposal. Surely, it will be like that the Scioli that we will see from now until the end of the campaign of this second round. Better late than never.
4. The Argentinian right has known to reinvent itself. That which appears to be an isolated attempt with Macri as the leader in the capital, has today converted into a movement with a presence in all the territory. Macrism went from a little: to covering the length and breadth of the country. Bringing together in the first stage characters know to be remote from traditional politics. But later, in the second moment, it commenced to weave alliances with old political parties (particularly with radicalism) to provide itself with territorial structure. Macri has been using a very 21st century language, with the new tone of the right on good terms. Constantly avoiding confrontation; distancing itself from its own past of neoliberal appearance; knowing to carry out everything advanced by the political opponent. It has scarcely proposed anything new despite having wanted to present itself as the leader of change. Its programmatic emptiness was packed with political marketing. This is the new strategy of the regional right that obeys good sportsmanship and resignation that the new common sense is characteristic of a change of epics in Argentina and in a good part of Latin America. In this way Macri has managed to slip through to a second round with real options of winning. This election it has tallied up; it leaves with the wind in its favour. But its real capacity of victory will depend a great deal on how it finds itself in a ring against Scioli. Up until this moment, a scenario not desired either by one or the other. We will see what happens from now on.
5. The mediator, Massa, managed to remain inside despite the duel of the two. Massa, the past of Kirchnerism, and now more anti-Kirchnerist than Macri, knew to negotiate what is supposed to be the importance of the votes useful in this type of electoral situation. He snuck into the party to stay. His discourse had a pendular movement: from conservative right in everything referring to punishment against insecurity, and liberal in everything economic. He was more critical of the role of the State than Macri. He looked to the extreme for confrontation, which served to express with notoriety his political proposal. No doubt that getting 21% of the vote permits him to constitute himself as the key to the second round. In his speech last night, he put his price: he sold himself to the highest bidder. Although everything appears to indicate that he will end up as an ally of Macri, one mustn't either rule out that he might offer himself to Scioli (he is anti-Kirchnerism, but it isn't so clear whether he might be anti-Scioli); or maybe he might not decide for either of the two in an explicit way thinking from here more on what could happen in four years.
6. Finally, it is always a key that brings with it the maximum difficulty at the time of explaining what happened in a electoral contest: it is that which we call the people. In Argentina, in these years, the social majority isn't by any means that which left from the crisis, from the playpen, from hungry and from misery. The change is change in all is fullness. And meanwhile what society thinks, demands, imagines, and votes for transforms. What a decade ago was a social demand, today (fortunately) is a naturalised right. The people want more; they have new questions, and it requires new responses. The popular and plebian can't at all be conceived as a static category. This is without doubt one of the fundamental axes of these future years in dispute, between the attempt of conservative restoration and the process of change that is in march.
These are some lines to understand what happened in this new map of Argentinian electoral politics after the elections. There isn't else left to do, but await the following electoral date to know who will be President from the 10th of December this year. From now, starts another campaign that had nothing to do with the previous one. Surely, the final outcome will depend more the Kirchnerist strategy than on what Macri can do. What Kirchnerism proposes and what Scioli decides to do will be the keys to what comes. But that is already another story.
- Alfredo Serrano Mancilla is the Director of the Strategic Centre of Latin American Geopolitics (CELAG).
[1] YPF, the initials of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales ; English: "Fiscal Oilfields ", is a vertically integrated Argentine energy company, engaged in the exploration and production of oil and gas, and the transportation, refining, and marketing of gas and petroleum products
[2] La Cámpora is an Argentine political youth organization supporting the governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. It is named after former Peronist president Héctor José Cámpora.
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