MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Feud Rips Argentina's Peronists Apart as Vote Looms

“Dictator,” “con artist,” “stupid.” The taunts are flying as Argentina's presidential race heats up, but the twist is that this year those hurling insults at each other belong to the same party.

The Peronist Party, the workers' movement founded by Juan and Eva Peron in the 1940s, is locked in a power struggle so bitter it threatens to break the party's decades-old grip on Argentine politics.

Handed the presidency on a platter after the opposition Radical Party was toppled by bloody riots a year ago, the Peronists had all the makings for a landslide win in April 27's presidential elections.

But an all-out war between its two most powerful figures -- transitional President Eduardo Duhalde and flamboyant ex-President Carlos Menem -- has split the party.

And now three Peronists -- Menem, Gov. Nestor Kirchner and former Gov. Adolfo Rodriguez-Saa -- are going head to head for the top office, and none has more than 16 percent support in opinion polls just two months before the vote.

If the wrangling doesn't lose the election for the Peronists, it will weaken the next president precisely when Argentina needs firms leadership to pull the nation out of its worst-ever economic crisis.

"This fracture of the Peronists represents a deep identity crisis ... The candidates' positions are irreconcilable," said Argentine sociologist and pollster Graciela Romer, who expects the Peronists ultimately to break into two parties.

An eclectic collection of figures including factory floor leaders and a former Formula One race car driver, the Peronists have been known to patch up their differences after brutal fights in the past. Now for the first time, they are divided going into a presidential vote.

Leading commentator and author Mariano Grondona calls the clashing ambitions of former running mates Menem and Duhalde "the mother of all battles" and "Argentina's tragedy."

Eight years ago Duhalde and Menem, whose huge sideburns and beaming smile came to symbolize Argentina's feel-good years of the early 1990s, were running on the same ticket for Buenos Aires governor and president, respectively. The term before that Duhalde was vice president and Menem president.

Duhalde blames Menem for scuppering his own 1999 presidential bid. With a rock-bottom popularity rating ruling him out this time around, he is doing all he can to ensure his nemesis does not return, telling him to "quit now" and branding him as "elderly" and "stupid."

Clash of the Titans

Duhalde last year vowed not to run as he brought October's election forward to April in a bid to calm political volatility, but he is still in the thick of the party machine.

He has now thrown the support of his faction behind a little-known provincial governor, Nestor Kirchner, and played a pivotal role in doing away with a party primary that Menem hoped would make him the official party candidate.

The party's candidates will now take their battle to the ballot box on April 27. It is not clear if they will be able to run under the Peronist name because the party is not holding primaries. They may not even be able to use the iconic symbols of Juan and Eva Peron.

Menem can still pull in votes, even with recent inquiries into his 1989-1999 mandate. Last year, he served five months of house arrest during an arms-trafficking probe and allegations surfaced he covered up a deadly bombing for a $10 million bribe.

Married to a beauty queen half his age, the 72-year-old kingpin dismisses Duhalde as a "dictator" whom he won't deal with because: "Talking to Duhalde is like putting on a lead life jacket. He has neither ability nor leadership."

Add into the fray Peronist hopeful Adolfo Rodriguez-Saa -- a former provincial governor who served as president for a week during the government crisis a year ago. His beaming smile as he announced a default on the public debt at the time drew shudders of investor disbelief abroad.

Rodriguez-Saa, who recently called Menem a "con artist" after Menem grouped him with Adolf Hitler, quit the presidency as Peronist power brokers withdrew support as Argentina saw five presidents in a fortnight at the height of the crisis.

The strongest opposition to the Peronists are anti-graft lawmaker Elisa Carrio, formerly of the Raidcal Party who has now formed her own ARI party, and former economy chief Ricardo Lopez Murphy. Each has single digit or low double digit support in opinion polls.

Romer says Menem, Rodriguez-Saa, Kirchner and Carrio are currently in a statistical tie, but none is expected to garner 45 percent of votes needed to avoid a second-round of voting. Romer expects one of the latter two to win that second-round vote on May 18 because their left-leaning tendencies are more in sympathy with voters weary of economic gloom.

"If you look at the swing to the center-left in the rest of Latin America and the demands of the Argentine people, a center-left or progressive candidate should have a better chance than the center-right," she said.

Lasting Appeal

A party with working class roots but no clear ideology, Peronism is a pillar of Argentine society that strengthened unions and improved workers benefits and wages during Peron's first government in the 1940s.

The Peronists have ruled Argentina for a total of 23 years since 1946, while the Radicals held power for a combined 15 years, with dictatorships accounting for the balance.

Stray into even the remotest of towns between the poor northern border with Bolivia to the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, and you will likely find a Peronist Party office and a plaque to Evita. But party diehards are wondering what the current turmoil portends.

"It's all in the air for us. No candidate seems to have any proposals," said Olga Castillo, a Peronist voter who earns $47 a month cleaning floors at a party museum near the capital.

Peronism was conceived by Peron with a military-style structure of one person giving the orders from the top down. Now the party's caudillos bus in "supporters" to attend their rallies in exchange for handouts of food and cash.

"Because there has never been a culture of debate, or healthy internal competition ... they (the Peronists) know no better than to resort to mafioso-like tactics," said leading Argentine historian Felix Luna.

Source: Agencies