MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Menem leads among Peronists

Former Argentine president Carlos Menem who ambitions a third mandate leads among Peronist hopefuls according to a poll published this week in the Buenos Aires press.

If internal elections were held this week in the Peronist Party, Mr. Menem would win with 21% of the vote followed closely by former president Adolfo Rodríguez Sáa and the governor of Santa Fe province Carlos Reutemann, with 19% and 17%, indicates an Ipsos-Mora poll published in La Nación.

Rodríguez Sáa belongs to a strong political family that dominates a small province, one of the few that is not in the red and actually has substantial reserves although trapped in the bank freeze. Following the downfall of President De la Rúa, he was named by the General Assembly Argentine president for a week when he defaulted the country's foreign debt.

Mr. Reutemann, a former Formula 1 international pilot, is one of the main leaders of the Peronist party, and twice governor of the influential Santa Fe province.

The poll at national level shows Mr. Menem in fourth place among the leading self nominated presidential candidates with 7% of vote intention.

Following the designation by the General Assembly last January of Mr. Eduado Duhalde as president, elections in Argentina are scheduled for October 2003.

The leading candidate is Elisa Carrió, a dissident Radical party woman Deputy who formed her own grouping and is the most vocal critic of the current political and economic system. She managed 19%. She's followed by Rodríguez Saá with 11% and another left wing extravagant Deputy, Luis Zamora, with 9%.

In line with the protest vote of the October 2001 legislative elections, when blank and annulled votes disputed ballots with elected candidates, 14% of those polled said they would vote blank.

However the poll also indicates that 15% believe that Mr. Menem will be Argentina's next president and that Elisa Carrió is effectively the most vocal critic of Argentine politics.