Now permanently housed in Constitución (unlike her presidency, her bitterest critics might say), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is paradoxically sidelined and occupying centre stage at the same time. With her exclusion from any electoral candidacy, the campaign effectively starts again but has yet to begin after the dust from the midweek marches has settled, thus leaving this column largely writing in the air.
As things now stand, the winners and losers in this new scenario are hard to discern – so much so that this new turn of the screw potentially changing everything ends up changing little or nothing. Neither President Javier Milei nor his strategists seem to have been able to make up their minds with any finality as to whether they were better off with CFK in or out of the race (depending on whether polarisation or fragmentation seemed their best bet) – they are probably thus secretly relieved that somebody has decided the question for them with the added benefit that they can quite genuinely pose as institutionally respectful of judicial independence, thus refuting the critique of “republican nerds.”
Meanwhile the increasingly divided Peronists have been handed a unifying factor in the perceived “political persecution” of their formal and spiritual leader which could also prove their downfall by painting themselves into a corner. Nobody in the movement can avoid joining the chorus of indignation any more than after the assassination attempt of 2022 – all Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof’s efforts to construct a parallel leadership via such moves as advancing the provincial elections, questioning the definition of candidacies or seeking a broader anti-Milei front must now be placed on hold. Yet while “Free Cristina” might work splendidly to paper over internal differences, it may not be topping the priorities of too many voters in these hard times, who will be placing their own needs over those of an autistic personality cult whose La Cámpora acolytes are widely seen as an elitist employment agency. Jaded has-beens with nothing to offer either the present or the future, they risk being badly out of touch with the people they claim to represent if they rally around a blind loyalty to a woman now fully a decade outside the presidency (unless she cares to recall her central role in the Alberto Fernández fiasco).
Yet Peronist self-destruction might extend even beyond reduction to a tiny bubble of militants divorced from all social realities – some are even arguing that this brutal exclusion of their leader leaves them no choice but to vote blank in the October midterms, not presenting any candidates at all if they cannot present their best. This sterile resistance to a democratic “farce” would abdicate power to Milei just as surely as such opposition boycotts in Venezuela have to Nicolás Maduro. Yet having said all this, those already writing about a post-Kirchnerite Argentina are jumping the gun.
If the assassination attempt against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner failed to have any discernible impact on the 2023 elections, there is no guarantee that confirmation of her conviction and political disqualification will be decisive this year. So what will?
Perhaps nothing. Midterm elections have come into question as giving administrations barely a year to govern for the long term before the next campaign takes over with various voices (including Fernández de Kirchner) calling for holding all elections every four years. A valid critique but such voices (perhaps starting with Cristina) might stop to think what would have become of the country if Kirchnerism had not been stopped in its tracks by the midterm defeats of 2009, 2013 and 2021. Furthermore, the political system in the United States seems to have been healthy enough with midterms every two years but there is a significant difference – the entire House of Representatives is renewed while here a majority (130 of the 257 deputies) will be remaining in their seats beyond October, thus diluting the turnover. Partial midterms plus the suspension of PASO primary streamlining of the number of candidacies seem the perfect recipe for an inconclusive electoral verdict.
Once upon a time a majority was anything over 50 percent, in the 1994 constitutional reform Carlos Menem redefined it as 40 percent and now with Javier Milei it would seem to be 30 percent, an uncannily recurrent figure where his movement is concerned. That was his percentage in the PASO primaries and first round in 2023 and that was also Manuel Adorni’s haul in last month’s midterm victory in this city (with the average libertarian vote in the half dozen provincial elections so far almost as high at around 27 percent). All this is in the political sphere but recent sociological studies are showing 30 percent of the population to be living comfortably enough while the remaining 70 percent face an uphill battle with their money starting to run out more or less around this time of the month – those below the poverty line may have fallen to 38 percent according to INDEC statistics bureau as reduced inflation makes it easier to place food on the table but sharply increased utility billing, rents and other factors conspire to complicate life for a further third of the population.
So this could well be the story of the midterm elections – an intense minority of 30 percent carry the day and call the shots while the majority of 70 percent disperses its votes among more traditional parties saddled with past failures or options whose visions are far more local than national, thus going unnoticed. The fragmentation includes a tendency to vote for faces rather than party labels when voting at all – that 70 percent is likely to include a huge percentage of absentees.
Next weekend will bring the first day of the rest of this election with voting in Formosa and Santa Fe.
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