MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Anti-Menem vote consolidates,

As a robust anti-Menem tendency seems to consolidate in the Argentine electorate, front runner in the presidential election Nestor Kirchner confessed this weekend to the Buenos Aires press that in his wildest dreams he never expected to become president in 2003.

"I never thought I'd be president in 2003; you always fight for it, but I didn't see it as something feasible", admitted Santa Cruz governor Mr. Kirchner who is leading former president Carlos Menem in the May 18 run off by 36 points in the latest opinion polls. Leaving aside blank and spoiled votes, plus abstentions, 68% of those interviewed declared they have the intention of voting Mr. Kirchner, and 31% for Mr. Menem.

"History has its circumstances, and things happened in Argentine politics that I honestly would have preferred they had not happened, but those circumstances have me in the threshold of this option", revealed the presidential hopeful.

Opinion polls indicate that Mr. Kirchner has attracted most votes, (73%) from left leaning candidate Elisa Carrió, from Liberal economist Ricardo López Murphy (63,4%), and from short lived former president Adolfo Rodríguez Sáa, (70%), who were defeated by the Santa Cruz governor and Mr. Menem in the first round last April 27. Ms. Carrió publicly declared that Mr. Kirchner was the "least of evils".

Although Mr. Menem won in the first round in 13 districts out of Argentina's 24, only two apparently will remain faithful to the former president, La Rioja and Catamarca. Mr. Kirchner is clearly leading in 15 districts including the strategic province of Buenos Aires that concentrates 37% of the country's electoral role.

Buenos Aires province is the stronghold of caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde.

Mr. Duhalde a recalcitrant political enemy of Carlos Menem has repeatedly insisted that the former president "is too old to run and should give up politics", adding that the latest overwhelming opinion polls will finish convincing him, and "Mr. Menem won't show up next Sunday May 18".

The apparent growing political extinction of Mr. Menem has also attracted an old rival to the debate, none else than Cuban president Fidel Castro.

"This little "gentleman" doesn't have the remotest chance of winning the election", declared Mr.Castro to an Argentine newspaper last Sunday.

Regarding Mr. Menem's claim that Mr. Kirchner was linked to the Montoneros guerrilla movement in the seventies, Mr. Castro revealed that he has information indicating that the surviving Montoneros actually supported the former president with "several hundred thousand dollars" when he was first elected in 1989.

"Maybe you should ask him about this", suggested Mr. Castro who is accused of having hosted for decades many Latinamerican guerrilla movements.

The Cuban leader confessed he always had an excellent personal relation with Mr. Menem, "we regularly exchanged La Rioja wines for Cuban cigars" and in regional summits he would tell me how proud he was of our friendship.

However when the press popped up, "Mr. Menem could not stop talking and condemning the Cuban regime".