The left-wing ruling party in Argentina appears to be in the middle of a complete collapse.
Background
The party, called the Frente de Todos (or “Everyone Front” or “Front for All” both of which sound as clunky in English as it does in Spanish so don’t ask me to explain the name choice) is a coalition of all the old Peronist parties. Peronism is a big tent without much coherence, but it would not be inaccurate to say it is currently divided between moderates and a more radical faction led by Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, aka “CFK.”
CFK and her followers are genuinely radical — a long time ago I met the current Governor of Buenos Aires province, Axel Kicillof. He seemed to be the real deal and I have to admit that I have some respect for the way he dealt with the country’s foreign creditors.
But CFK herself is also spectacularly corrupt. She’s under a legal cloud, protected by her position as Vice-President.
The current president, Alberto Fernández (no relation) is a moderate. Rather than fight it out with him for the nomination in the 2019 primary — and thereby risk losing, and thereby risk jail time — she joined him on the ticket as Veep.
The Election
So, as you know, the Frente got hammered in Sunday’s primary elections. The opposition held some actual primaries; the Frente for the most part did not. What the election was for the Frente was a preview of what the real election in November will look like, and it was bad.
For a good overview of the election (well, besides mine, ahem) see Maia here. I like her take on Javier Milei, a seriously batshit insane libertarian candidate for Congress. Seriously, watching the stunned look on an Argentine reporter’s face as he discovers that a woman in one of the capital’s poorest neighborhoods voted for Milei is priceless.
Votante de Javier Milei en la Villa 31 pide que se terminen los planes sociales, "le sacan al que está en blanco para darle a gente que no quiere laburar". Estamos frente a un evento histórico.pic.twitter.com/33OxJIqbth
— Pregonero 🗽 (@PregoneroL) September 15, 2021
But Milei is an aside, at least for now. The key question here is why the Frente did so badly.
For the answer to that question, you can really begin and end with Covid. Massive lockdowns failed to prevent its spread — Argentina did not become Australia. The economy failed. Then the government botched the vaccination rollout, getting into a food fight with Pfizer over legal immunity. Finally, President Fernández got into some Gavin-Newsom-level bad optics for flouting his own rules. Leticia Abad and I are going to try to write a more rigorous paper about the election, but Maia has a great overview.
The Normal Reaction
As I expected, the Frente immediately rolled out a slew of populist economic policies intended to provoke an electoral recovery by November. Minimum wage up 10%. Zero-percent government loans to wage laborers. A US$32 bonus to senior citizens. One that really annoys me: natural gas subsidies between 30% and 50%. One that doesn’t: lots of construction. (See right for a picture of a commuter rail line they rolled out in 2019 at a speed that would impress China and makes the U.S. look very very sad.)
Argentina also has a small universal basic income (IFE) put in place during the Covid recession. The government will now means-test it but also make it bigger for poor families.
And from where will come the cash? First, they intend to go tell the IMF to screw off and forget about getting principal payments for a while. (Interest will be paid, so no default, and honestly the IMF has rolled over for greater demands in the past.) Second, they’ll keep on printing more money and transferring it to the Treasury:
Hey, it could staunch the bleeding by November, and to be honest the economic cost probably won’t be that high.
The Crazy Reaction
Only, well.
CFK seems to think she’s actually running the administration from behind the scenes. She demanded that the actual President fire a whole bunch of his cabinet and put a bunch of her people in place.
And then CFK’s achichincles started yelling that the President is actually a “squatter” in the Casa Rosada. One congresswomen put it this way. “He’s renting the office, he doesn’t understand that he’s renting. The owner of the votes, the legitimate owner, the owner of popular support, the owner of the base that sustains this government and one that put him there is Cristina! Alberto Fernández couldn’t dream of even being an alderman.”
You’re not supposed to make the subtext into text when you’re trying to run things from behind the scenes!
If CFK was really pulling strings the way that, say, Plutarco Calles did back in the day in Mexico, well, then she wouldn’t need to send messages telling the nominal President to fire people. She would just wave a finger somehow and the people would get fired.
But although she is many things but she is not a Plutarco Calles. President Fernández isn’t going to quietly back down, because CFK isn’t really in control and she has given him no graceful way to give her what she wants. All she is managing to do is make the Peronists look really really bad to swing voters.
It is possible seeing try to CFK bludgeon her way back into the driver’s seat will inspire Peronists who stayed home this Sunday to make their way to polls to support the Frente in November.
But how likely is that? First, as I mentioned, you can’t replace candidates now: unless enough the Frente candidates on enough slates proclaim their loyalty to Cristina, any votes for the Frente will be votes for Alberto’s people. “Vote for Alberto’s useless incompetents because you need to do that in order to vote for Cristina” is not an inspiring message.
And are there really all these uninspired Peronists sitting out there? It is true that turnout collapsed during the primary. But … Covid, maybe? And maybe people are realizing that PASO isn’t a real election?
In short, I’m not seeing much here that makes it look like November will be any better for the Frente and I am seeing a lot of things that could make it look much much worse for them. Shiny new infrastructure notwithstanding.
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