Buenos Aires | The populist legacy of incumbent President Cristina Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, is now in the hands of longtime ally Daniel Scioli, who claimed victory in Sunday’s closely watched primary vote but still faces a tricky challenge in October’s presidential vote.
Mrs. Fernandez will not be on the ballot, but her left-leaning agenda almost certainly will be. It’s an agenda that country has pursued for more than a dozen often drama-packed years since Mr. Kirchner was first elected to the Casa Rosada, Argentina’s presidential mansion, back in 2003.
The vote will also be the first national test since the stunning scandal from the mysterious suicide of a top Argentine prosecutor in January rocked the Fernandez administration, but one that the president appears to have weathered.
Argentina’s next president will likely be picked in a runoff between Mr. Scioli — Mr. Kirchner’s vice president, the current governor of Buenos Aires province and Mrs. Fernandez’s handpicked successor — and Mauricio Macri, the center-right mayor of Buenos Aires, according to results from this weekend’s national primaries, in which Argentines were called to simultaneously voice their party preferences and choose presidential nominees.
Some 38 percent of the electorate backed Mr. Scioli, the sole candidate of the Peronist Front for Victory when Mrs. Fernandez had forced out numerous challengers and installed her chief ideologue, Carlos Zannini, as Mr. Scioli’s running mate.
Mr. Macri, meanwhile, came in second at 24 percent, though he clearly won nomination of the opposition Cambiemos coalition, which logged a combined total of 30 percent between Mr. Macri and his two internal challengers.
The final tallies from Sunday’s primary vote were being watched closely because of Argentina’s peculiar electoral law, which stipulates that the winner of the presidential vote’s first round on Oct. 25 only needs to score 45 percent — or 40 percent if he beats his closest opponent by at least 10 percentage points.
Otherwise, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held on Nov. 22 — a scenario that now seems exceedingly likely. “There is no doubt” that there will be a second round, said Diego Ferreyra, a political scientist at the Catholic University of Argentina.
Political hurdles
Mrs. Kirchner and her allies face some real political hurdles, even though most political analysts say the sensational death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had been investigating high-level corruption, appears to have played little role in Sunday’s result. The economy is battling inflation rates estimated at over 30 percent, and a bitter debt dispute with U.S. creditors has helped undercut confidence in the Argentine peso.
Supporters of Mr. Scioli’s had come out early and loudly on Sunday night to celebrate a victory that, in the end, turned out to be less “convincing” than they insisted. Addressing them after midnight, the 58-year-old — a former powerboat racer and uncharismatic public speaker — limited his comments to a pledge of allegiance to the populist “model” of “our beloved president.”
Even more uncomfortable on flag-draped stage appeared Mr. Zannini, 60, who had long served Mrs. Fernandez as a Karl Rove-like “architect” behind the scenes. The Kirchner clan wants the presumed vice president — who has few constitutional powers — to function as “a kind of inspector” in a Scioli Cabinet, Mr. Ferreyra said.
A pragmatist, Mr. Scioli over the past four years managed to largely appease Mrs. Fernandez while keeping his ultra-Kirchnerist vice governor, Gabriel Mariotto, in check. But “Zannini is not Mariotto; he is a much more politically savvy person,” Mr. Ferreyra warned.
At the Cambiemos rally, meanwhile, Mr. Macri exuded his trademark optimism while countering critics who had said he flip-flopped last month by saying that he would maintain the government’s ownership of flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas and oil giant YPF, both nationalized under Mrs. Fernandez.
“I want to tell all Argentines that I am absolutely clear on what my values and convictions are,” the 56-year-old said, adding that he appreciated both free market liberals’ defense of individual liberties and socialists’ insistence on equality.
The engineer and former head of the Boca Juniors soccer club then made an impassioned call for unity among the opposition — the lack of which was underlined on Sunday by the 21 percent who backed the UNA coalition of Peronist dissidents.
UNA leader Sergio Massa, a former Fernandez Cabinet chief-turned-opposition leader, has few chances of making it past the first round of voting. But who his supporters turn to in an eventual runoff will likely determine the next president.
How Massa backers might split, though, is one of the major unknowns of the election, said political analyst Joaquin Morales Sola, because they dislike Mr. Scioli’s ties to the Kirchners but — as Peronists — also have little sympathy for Mr. Macri, a traditional foe.
“Sixty percent of society are anti-Kirchnerist,” Mr. Morales Sola said. “But that does not mean that 60 percent are anti-Peronist.”
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