MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Elections.

Headlines:
Argentine candidates' policies towards the US.
“Vote not to vote”.

Argentine candidates' policies towards the US

Only two of the five candidates with a reasonable chance of becoming the next Argentine president have met with the current United States Ambassador in Buenos Aires and his political advisor, or have a fluid relation with the world's superpower. According to the Argentine press only former president Carlos Menem and Liberal economist Ricardo López Murphy have met with Ambassador James Walsh and his advisor Michael Matera, while Santa Cruz governor, Néstir Kirchner, who leads most opinion polls and is openly supported by caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde, has never had an encounter. Nationalism and/or condemning United States "strong hand" in the world have become campaign attitudes for Mr. Kirchner, Mr. Adolfo Rodríguez Sáa and leftist populist Ms. Elisa Carrió, who believes in the moral "confrontation with the unilateral imperialism of Mr. George W. Bush". Mr. Kirchner's contacts with the US Embassy have been through his campaign manager and his international affairs expert, Mr. Alberto Fernández and Mr. Juan Pablo Lohé. "Mr. Kirchner will only meet Mr. Bush when he's elected president", points out Mr. Lohé. The Santa Cruz governor, as well as caretaker president Duhalde, has basically a distant if not critical, attitude towards the Bush administration. However the recent announcement that current Finance Minister Roberto Lavagna would continue in a future President Kirchner administration as Foreign Affairs Minister was a relief message for the US embassy. Mr. Rodríguez Sáa who as interim president declared Argentina's default, has had previous meetings with Ambassador Walsh but during the campaign has avoided all contact. "As Argentine president he will not approach the US, will not request aid from the IMF and his foreign policy will be based in strengthening of Mercosur", said Gustavo Valenzuela, Mr. Rodríguez Sáa spokesperson. Mr. López Murphy relations with the American Embassy, the State Department and multilateral credit organizations are very good. His foreign policy is based in a "rebuilding of relations with the great powers" and can be catalogued as the preferred candidate for Washington. Mr. Menem has good relations with the US Embassy although not with Mr. Walsh. The State Department recognize he was the man who opened the Argentine economy but the accumulation of corruption claims during his administration is not heartening. However it was with former Foreign Affairs Minister Guido Di Tella that relations with United States were coined as "carnal". But it is historian and analysts Rosendo Fraga who best summarized the situation: "Menem and López Murphy give priority to Argentina's relation with the rest of the world and are not antagonistic towards the United States. The other candidates give lesser importance to Argentina's relation with the rest of the world and have a more critical and hostile vision of the US. However it's the number one world power represents two thirds of the world's gross product. Any Argentine president will have to have a relation with the US, but it will be influenced by what they believe about that relation. This is the case of Ms. Carrió, Mr. Rodríguez Sáa and Mr. Kirchner".

"Vote not to vote"

With less that two weeks before presidential elections in Argentina several groups identified with academia, intellectuals and educated middle class began distributing in Buenos Aires ballots identified as a "vote not to vote", another expression of disgust towards the political establishment. "We don't want to be accomplices to another deception of the people," said novelist Mempo Giardinelli, one of a number of intellectuals who are encouraging people to cast a protest vote against the 19 candidates vying in the April 27 election. According to Mr. Giardinelli more than 100 grass-roots organizations were supporting the campaign for a "protest vote, the vote not to vote for anybody." Giardinelli, who received the 1996 Romulo Gallego Prize for his novel "El santo oficio de la memoria," heads "Manifiesto Argentino," a non-partisan group comprised largely of writers. In an interview with Buenos Aires' Radio Continental, the writer said his organization would begin an ad campaign next week to prevent Argentine constituents "from falling again into the trap of the blank ballot." Blank ballots are counted as valid, and thus end up "diluting the sense of the protest vote," Giardinelli stressed. The writer said his group was distributing ballots reading "Argentina needs honest rulers" for voters to put in the ballot boxes, as having those slips recorded as invalid ballots would convey "the energetic protests of the citizenry." In the 2001 legislative elections, the total of abstentions and blank, null or challenged ballots represented up to 41.7% percent of the electorate, one of the most dramatic manifestations ever of what Argentines call the "scold vote." However representatives of the major Buenos Aires city public opinion polling companies have anticipated that the protest vote phenomena of 2001 will be considerably less next September, although some believe that as mush as 35% of the 25,5 million electorate would either stay home or spoil their ballots next April 27.