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Argentina Becoming ‘Normal’: The 1999 Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Torcuato S. Di Tella
Torcuato S. Di Tella*
Affiliation:
University of Buenos Aires
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Extract

THE OCTOBER 1999 ELECTIONS HAVE RESULTED IN THE SECOND CHANGE ever from one political party to another since the inception of mass politics in Argentina in 1916. The first such change came in 1989 when the Peronist Carlos Menem took over from Radical Raúl Alfonsín.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 67 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2000

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References

1 I italicize here and leave in Spanish the word Radical to point to the fact that this party is not today ‘radical’ in the English sense of the term.

2 There was no extreme right presidential candidate, though some at local level, with small impact. Quoted percentages are of the valid votes. There was a 3 per cent blank vote. About 80 per cent of the electorate went to the polls, the normal figure in Argentina. In the 1989 elections, when Menem acceded to power amid a wave of enthusiasm, there was an 85 per cent presence at the ballot boxes.

3 I use the concept as in Ionescu’s, Ghiţa and Gellner’s, Ernest edited book Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969 Google Scholar. Lately it has become a term of abuse for politicians who do not know how to add two plus two, or alternatively for any conservative leader capable of appealing to popular prejudices, including such unimpeachably establishment personalities as Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, which confuses some superficial traits for the substance. Nor is it convenient to call ‘populist’ such movements as Le Pen’s or Haider’s which are based on xenophobia and have as their main enemies other poor people and not the powerful.

4 First of all, several nondescript leftist parties, including the Communists, got together in 1990 with a Peronist splinter group to form the Frente Grande. Immediately its leader, Chacho Alvarez, convinced member organizations to dissolve and transform the Frente into a party, thus in effect expelling the Communists who could never agree to such a sacrifice. Afterwards the Frente Grande joined another important Peronist fraction headed by former Mendoza governor José Octavio Bordón into the Frente País Solidario (Frepaso), which got 30 per cent of the vote in the presidential elections of 1995. As a result of a contest for leadership, Bordón broke away, to return to the Peronist fold, but leaving quite a few of his followers in the Frepaso. This coalition also includes two social democratic parties, a leftist Intransigente one, and the Christian Democrats. It keeps good but somewhat tense relationships with the UCR, its partner in the Alianza, where a couple of right-of-centre provincial parties can also be found.

5 I may refer here to my previous articles in this journal, ‘Menem’s Argentina’, Government and Opposition, 25:1 (1990) and ‘Letter from Argentina’, Government and Opposition, 27:1 (1992). I have treated this subject at greater length in two papers: ‘The Transformations of Peronism’, published in James P. Brennan’s edited book, Peronism and Argentina, Wilmington, Delaware, SR Books, 1998; and ‘Evolution and Prospects of the Argentine Party System’, in Joseph Tulchin and Allison Garland, (eds), Argentina: The Challenges of Modernization, Wilmington, Delaware, SR Books, 1998.