The electoral marathon faced by President Néstor Kirchner since he took office in May is into its last month, with contests still to be held in six provinces — all electing deputies for the lower chamber of congress, four of them also electing senators. At this point in time, the ruling Partido Justicialista (PJ) has comfortably retained its own quorum in the senate (a position it has enjoyed for two decades), and is within reach of achieving the same position in the chamber of deputies.
Despite upsets in three of the four senatorial contests held in late October, the PJ is likely to emerge with about the same number of seats as now (40); only 37 are needed to form a quorum. In the lower chamber it already has 122 seats secured; seven more are required to make up the quorum there, and the PJ is considered likely to retain all the seats to be renewed over the coming month — except in the province of San Luis, where the breakaway Movimiento Nacional y Popular created by former President Adolfo Rodríguez Saá has a stronger chance of winning.
All this only confirms one of the known features of Argentina's new political scene: that the PJ is the dominant force. What it does not yet say is how the internal alignments of the PJ will develop — in other words, how many of the legislators Kirchner can count as his own, if and when he has to face down other well-established PJ power brokers, such as former President Eduardo Duhalde.
Survival of the UCR
The unexpected outcome of the electoral marathon is that the opposition Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), which had appeared virtually wiped out in the last presidential elections, has survived as the second-biggest force in congress. That it would retain a presence was a given, as only a third of the legislature was being renewed, but it actually emerged from the provincial contests with more support than many had imagined possible.
In the senate, it will end up with at least the same number of seats as before — or perhaps even one more, if the Frente de Todos coalition in the province of Corrientes gets a seat for that district. It will make up for the loss of a seat to the breakaway `independent Radical' bloc formed by Rodolfo Terragno because the new senator for La Pampa will return the seat to the fold.
In the lower chamber, though the UCR has lost more than a dozen seats, it has a guaranteed 44, and may win as many as four more in the elections still to be held.
The third force in congress may be the `Interbloque Federal', a coalition of various blocs of provincial congressmen. The strongest of these are the Unidad Federalista, led by Luis Patti, and the Movimiento Popular Neuquino (MPN), which have already agreed to work together and, if possible, reconstitute the broader alliance of provincial parties.
The lower chamber has 257 seats; the senate, 72. After the October 2001 elections, the PJ had 116 seats in the former and 40 in the latter, whereas the UCR had 71 and 24, respectively. No party has a blocking one-third of the vote in the chamber of deputies; it remains to be seen if the UCR retains that strength in the senate.
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