Borderline politics in Argentina until October
By M.B. Gambarotta
Tomorrow, August 28, is the day when the definitive vote count for the Buenos Aires province primaries will be announced. Will that change anything? It could just be that the final result will show that former president Crisitna Fernández de Kirchner, running for the Senate, outvoted President Maurico Macri’s candidate, Esteban Bullrich. The vote count was tight on election night, August 13. Bullrich was ahead by less than one percent when the provisional vote count was halted with about 95 percent of the ballots counted on the night. But the official result could end up showing something slightly different. Fernández de Kirchner will have something to celebrate. But even if she does end up technically winning Fernández de Kirchner knows that she needed a much more convincing victory to show that her political clout is intact. The former president is facing a number of court investigations for corruption in the middle of the campaign. (UPDATE: Formal results will be announced on Wednesday, authorities said).
The midterm elections will be held on October 22. The race is wide open in Buenos Aires province. Macri’s coalition could have the edge because the Kirchnerite camp had hoped for a bigger win in the primaries. The Kirchnerites complained that the vote count was “manipulated.” They will have something to work with if they end up winning. But the momentum is now on the side of Macri’s coalition, especially after Buenos Aires province Governor María Eugenia Vidal was personally involved in the last stages of the campaign.
Still the tight vote count means that the electoral nerves of the nation will be on edge on the night of October 22. Fernández de Kirchner needs to reach out to the 500,000 voters who backed her former Transport and Interior Minister, Florencio Randazzo, on August 13. Randazzo had urged the former president to face him in the primary. Instead CFK chose to skirt the direct confrontation by formally walking about from the Peronist party. Randazzo has refused to drop out of the race even when he was clearly outvoted by Fernández de Kirchner. The former minister seems to have a crucial slice of the Peronist machine with him. It is a slice of the machine that CFK needs back on her side if she is to stand a chance of winning in October.
Macri’s coalition, Cambiemos, is confident. But Argentina is still a volatile country politically. It will be like that until the votes are counted on October 22 and, presumably, Cambiemos manages a win in Buenos Aires province, where 40 percent of the nation’s voters live. Cambiemos also needs to win in Santa Fe province, another big district that was “won” by the Kirchnerites on August 13.
No camps will want to make mistakes. There are a number of factors that could change the mood of the nation. Santiago Maldonado, an activist, has been missing since August 1 when he took part in a Mapuche demonstration in Chubut province. Human rights groups suspect the Border Guard, which was deployed in the area at the time, is responsible for Maldonado’s disappearance. Patricia Bullrich, the president’s Security minister, is under pressure. The national government has so far refused to accept the theory that Border Guard troops are to blame.
Violence broke out during a demonstration outside government offices in La Plata, the BA province capital, during the week. Cars were set on fire. The Maldonado case has civil society on edge and fringe groups seem to be agitating violence (or is it the intelligence services?).
It’s not the kind of situation the national government had hoped for after a good result on August 13 nationwide. The Macri administration reacted to the positive result by launching an offensive in the Magistrates Countil to order the impeachment of Federal Judge Eduardo Freiler. The catch is that the vote was taken when the Kirchnerite side of the council was one seat short after a senator was forced out for not being a lawyer and had yet to be replaced. This technicality allowed the ruling coalition to muster a two-third majority at the Council against Freiler — it is a majority it does not have when all the council seats are taken and the opposition is fully represented.
Some observers said that here was Macri stretching the limits of legality — a bit like Fernández de Kirchner did when she was in office.
The other front that can alter the landscape is labour. The trade unions, which still consider themselves the labour wing of the Peronist party, marched on Plaza de Mayo on August 22 to protest the economic situation and the loss of jobs. The march degenerated into some violence when factions of the powerful teamsters union, which was supposed to be in charge of security, clashed in a scuffle to get close to the centre stage. The teamsters are headed by Hugo Moyano, a Peronist who broke away from the Kirchners after 2010 and also has clout in the world of football. Moyano’s top lieutenant in the teamsters union is his son, Pablo.
The Moyanos refrained from endorsing the Kirchnerite presidential candidate defeated by Macri in 2015. You could even say that Hugo Moyano made a veiled endorsed of Macri. Macri and Moyano had forged a good relationship when the now president was mayor of Buenos Aires City between 2007–2015. Moyano’s union controls everything from garbage collection to the transportation of cash in trucks to feed ATMS in the city. Moyano also reportedly has sway in the private postal company OCA, which is in deep financial trouble.
The main speaker at the General Labour Confederation (CGT) rally on August 22, Juan Carlos Schmid, announced a trade union gathering for September 25 that could end up calling a general strike against Macri. Schmid was forced to rush his speech because of the ugly clashes and the potential announcement of a strike caught other union leaders by surprised. The turnout was large.
President Macri was reportedly not amused by the rally and the clashes, which included the bizarre sight of teamsters wielding large white wooden crosses used by Malvinas war veterans to protest in Plaza de Mayo.
Immediately Macri ordered the sacking of two officials in his administration who have close ties to the trade unions. One of the officials sacked in the deputy Labour Minister Ezequiel Sabor. The other is Luis Scervino, in charge of the health services office. Scervino’s office controls the piles of cash that pay for the union controlled healthcare schemes.
The president had called the CGT demonstration “a waste of time.” Labour Minister Jorge Triaca said the protest had the stench of a political rally.
Macri was clearly retaliating when he sacked the two officials. The dismissals prompted rife speculation that the Macri administration will now seek to curtail the clout of the trade unions and reform the healthcare schemes that they control. Pablo Moyano’s reaction was to call on workers to vote against Macri in October.
Macri’s move to defy the Moyanos and the CGT status quo is bold because much of the trade union movement, while calling itself Peronist, is not on the same side with the Kirchnerites. Yet trade union leaders, according to polls, are not popular. Will Macri’s coalition gain votes by turning the election into a plebiscite about the powerful trade unions? Unions are not popular. But they are powerful. Historically they have outlasted the popularity of the politicians. Raúl Alfonsín, president between 1983–1989, famously launched a reform of the Peronist union only to be attacked with 13 general strikes. The Peronists won the presidency in 1989 in the middle of rife inflation and with Alfonsín forced to hand over power ahead of the end of his mandate. The difference now is that the Kirchnerite decade split the trade union movement.
Macri is close to reaffirming his authority. But his coalition still needs to win in Buenos Aires province and Santa Fe in October for his new-found strength to be real. Especially if the idea is to take on the trade unions.
