MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Kirchner in collision course with ruling party.

Argentine president Nestor Kirchner ignored the new authorities of the powerful ruling Peronist Party elected over the week end and passed the word on to his faithful that he will only stand by a really “renovated” political organization.

The presidential decision seems to signal a collision course with the governors of the most important provinces of the country leading to a potential dangerous fracture of the ruling party which with cohesion and verticality has dominated Argentine politics for the last sixty years.

Although the new president of the party governor Eduardo Fellner is a Kirchner faithful, the president said he would not tolerate in the new structure certain characters he loathes --and who feel the same towards him--, and who do not represent the new policies of his administration which seems more open to the centre left.

"I'm concerned, and I feel bad as a Peronist. I'm not interested in any post of a party that seems at loggerheads with the government", remarked Governor Jorge Busti.

"I don't need the governors or the party to rule the country", apparently was the reply of President Kirchner according to a close associate who anticipated the president "will go ahead with his decisions and the course he set to the administration".

The fracture seems to have been triggered by the attitude of Mr. Kirchner and Mrs. Kirchner, Senator Cristina Fernandez, during a recent commemoration when he publicly apologized for the Argentine state atrocities committed during the last military dictatorship, (1976/1983) and condemned the last twenty years of democracy for not having exposed those atrocities.

Mr. Kirchner's unfair remarks (at least forty Junta members and high ranking officers faced trial and were condemned and jailed during the first democratically elected government, 1983/89) were not well received by the political spectrum and the president privately apologized to several leaders and organizations.

Furthermore some right wing Peronist governors do not feel at ease with the growing influence in the administration of left wing Peronists, some of them identified with the former guerrilla movement Montoneros which is the seventies forced a split in the party and the loss of government to the military.

Former president Eduardo Duhalde whose dominant position in the party helped Mr. Kirchner get elected president in 2003 is trying to cool tempers by recalling that for good Peronists, "if the country is doing fine, the government must have the full support and you have to live with the rest".

But many hardcore Peronists are unconvinced with Mr. Kirchner's obstinate disregard for the party and less pleased with his demand that a new congress be convened.

If finally there's a collision, Mr. Kirchner will have to learn to rule with public opinion and a fractured party. His advisors believe many governors can't afford to confront him because they will need funds and financing for their debt ridden provinces.