Brazil & Southern Cone - September 2007 (ISSN 1471-4431

With just over a month until the presidential contest, recent victories for President Néstor Kirchner in provincial elections have been overshadowed by accusations of fraud and demands for voting recounts. Despite the seemingly insuperable position of his wife and presidential candidate Cristina Fernández in the polls, clashes in two provinces as well as Duhalde's announcement of his return to politics, suggests complications ahead for the Kirchners.

On 16 September, provincial elections took place in Chabut, with an easy victory for Mario Das Nueves of Kirchner's Frente para la Victoria (FPV), who was re-elected with around 70% of the vote. His main challenger, Raúl Berneche of the opposition Unión Cí­vica Radical (UCR), won just 14%. Nevertheless, Das Neves reiterated his intention to run for president in 2011, a promise which might yet see him fall foul of the Kirchners: either Néstor or Cristina is likely to run in that election. 

The contest in the province of Chaco on the same day however proved much more controversial: Jorge Capitanich, who ran for one of Kirchner's "plural coalitions" of Peronists and others - Frente Chaco Merece Más - won by a mere 2,000 votes, less than half a percentage point, against Angel Rozas, of the Unión Cí­vica Radical (UCR), which had held the province for the last 12 years. Consequently Rozas also proclaimed himself winner and demanded a recount which was granted, with the final results expected to be announced by the end of this week.

As well as the polemic over the Chaco elections, a dispute over the provincial contest which took place on 2 September in the province of Córdoba rumbles on; Juan Schiaretti, an ally of Kirchner defeated the candidate for the Frente Cí­vico y Social, Luis Juez, by just 1.1% of the vote. This had proven the narrowest victory margin for gubernatorial provincial elections since the country's return to democracy in 1983. Juez protested fraud and requested a complete vote-by-vote recount which was initially turned down. However the electoral judge of Córdoba, Marta Vidal, subsequently ruled that 205 of the total 6,152 ballot boxes be re-opened following specific challenges from the Frente Civico y Social that they had been tampered with. The magistrate also declared void the results from six polling stations, although she has yet to announce whether this means that voters will re-submit their votes in those stations. 

The Córdoba fiasco also coincided with a defeat for Kirchner in Santa Fe, the second most important province in the country in which Hermes Binner, a socialist representing a loose coalition known as Frente Progresista, Cí­vico y Social (FCS) scored an emphatic victory over Rafael Bielsa, who stood for Kirchner's FPV, winning 48.6% of the vote, a 10-point margin over Bielsa. While Kirchner hailed the 16 September election results as a sign that Argentina was backing the "process of transformation and change", presidential candidates 

Elisa Carrió of the Coalición Cí­vica, former economy minister Roberto Lavagna (UNA) and Ricardo López Murphy of the Recrear coalition all seized on the uncertainty surrounding the Córdoba and Chaco elections to express fears over possible fraud for the 28 October presidential contest. Carrió and Lavagna requested international observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS) to oversee the presidential elections. However, the electoral judges have refused to grant the request, arguing that this issue was not accounted for in national legislation. Instead "experts" from other countries would be called on to oversee the elections, who would effectively have less power.

National newspaper, la Nacion, also reported that two of the electoral judges based in Buenos Aires (which accounts for 38% of the total electorate) anticipate complications over the vote on 28 October, in a similar vein to the events which unfolded in Córdoba and Chaco. The judges, Leopoldo Schiffrin and Manuel Humberto Blanco attributed possible difficulties to two factors; the similarity of symbols appearing on ballot papers which could lead to challenges and the unprecedented increase in the number of voters able to vote. In Buenos Aires, some 340,000 more people are expected to vote than in the 2005 elections, representing an increase of nearly 3.5%. 

As well as concerns over possible fraud and complications in the electoral procedure, two incidents of unrest have proved a further headache for the Kirchners; a rally by Fernández in Tierra del Fuego ended in violence on 17 September, a reminder that she is not popular throughout Argentina despite her position in the opinion polls. The government's vulnerability in Tierra del Fuego was initially exposed in June when its candidate for governor, Hugo Cóccarro, was defeated by radical opponent Fabiana Rí­os. Cristina was already off-stage when the unrest began in the sports hall where she was speaking. The violence was between rival sectors of a lorry drivers union who then turned on police who tried to intervene. Two people were injured in the violence.

There have also been social protests in Kirchner's native province of Santa Cruz, where he ruled as governor for 12 years before passing on power to proxies. While only accounting for 0.5% of the national electorate, the symbolic importance of Santa Cruz for Kirchner is underlined by the fact that he keeps returning. The most recent protests by state workers and teachers produced the fourth violent clash in as many months and began hours before Kirchner arrived to take part in a political rally in the provincial capital, Rí­o Gallegos. 

The participation of heterogeneous social sectors also belied the governments' claims that the protests are being carried out solely by the teachers' union, supported by the radical left fringe opposing Kirchnerismo. Teachers were out-numbered in the protest. The last time Kirchner visited Santa Cruz on 17 August, accompanied by Fernández, workers also staged a protest. Daniel Varizat, a former aide of Kirchner's, ploughed his car through a hostile crowd, hitting 17 people and seriously injuring five, an episode which led to the resignation of the chief of police in Santa Cruz, Wilfredo Roque. Santa Cruz will also hold provincial elections on 28 October: Kirchner is backing the incumbent, Daniel Peralta, the third governor in one term since Kirchner left office.

Duhalde announces his return to politics

The other less-than-welcome news for the Kirchners was the announcement by former president Eduardo Duhalde that he intends to return to politics after 10 December, when Kirchner hands over power. There is a clear motive behind Duhalde's decision: to reconstruct and assume the leadership of the moribund Partido Justicialista (PJ). Such a move would pit him against Kirchner given that one of the reasons he is believed to be stepping aside for his wife is precisely to assume the leadership of the PJ and to create his own political space, by means of his cross-party coalition Concertación Plural, around it. 

Duhalde stabilised the country after the crisis of 2001 and handed over to President Néstor Kirchner in 2003. At the time, Duhalde said that he would support the Kirchner government. Now, according to Duhalde's allies, Duhalde has said: "I always said that my support and my silence was for this government not for another: this government ends on 10 December." His powerbase is in Buenos Aires, where Kirchner's support is thin. In June Kirchner's candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires was trounced by a rightwing businessman, Mauricio Macri. However, Duhalde's problem is that he has been out of the game so long. Macri recently said that he had assumed Duhalde had retired.

• DNU
  President Néstor Kirchner has passed more "decrees of necessity and urgency" (DNU) than congress has laws over the course of the last four years. According to a study by the Centro de Estudios para Polí­ticas Públicas Aplicadas (Ceppa) Kirchner passed 249 decrees while sending only 176 bills to congress during this period. "The superpowers plus the DNUs mean congress has ceased to exist," Delia Ferreira Rubio, the head of Ceppa, said.