MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Increasing support (and challenges) for Mrs. Kirchner presidential bid

Senator Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

A week after Argentina's First Lady Cristina Kirchner was confirmed as the government's candidate for the October presidential election, several public opinion polls show her vote intention rating on the rise and closing in on that of her husband President Nestor Kirchner. But there are also surprising replies about the president's “political comeback project for 2011”.

"This week, Cristina's vote intention climbed from 46.5% to 48.2%", pointed out Enrique Zuleta Puceiro one of the several pollsters working for the Kirchner administration. Far behind are other potential candidates such as former Economy minister Roberto Lavagna 11.9%, Elisa Carrió 10.6%, followed by several other hopefuls who are below the 5% threshold. "It's only logical that a candidate should grow after the launching", said Analia del Franco from Analogias, which is also making a public opinion assessment for the government. However independent pollsters also agree: "vote intentions showed her 12 points below the President, but now that he's moved aside, it seems she's moving in", said Jorge Giacobbe whose latest poll a few weeks ago had Cristina with 40.9% and 30 points ahead of Lavagna. But Zuleta Puceiro's work also revealed that 41.3% of interviews believe that the First Lady's candidacy is part of "President Kirchner's political comeback project for 2011". Another 26.2% believes Mr Kirchner would "co-govern" next to his wife, while 21.7% are convinced he will actually continue to exercise political power. Besides the number of Argentines who believe the economic and political situation of the country will worsen has risen 3 to 5 points in the last month, with a similar percentage drop of those who believe "things will be better". Actually since September 2006 President Kirchner's performance has been exposed to slight but sustained erosion, from 61 to 54% in June, mainly because of inflation, loss of salaries purchasing power and the growing feeling of insecurity. However the ill feeling has not shown in loss of vote intention for President Kirchner mainly because of the opposition's incapacity to offer alternative solutions. Meantime in the north of the country those groups which belong to the ruling all powerful Peronist party but do not support the Kirchner's couple political project reached an agreement to present an optional ticket to be headed by one of the party's heavyweights, former governor, former interim president, Senator Ramon Puerta, and a lady, yet to be named but with the sufficient political clout to face and challenge Cristina Kirchner. The "anti-K" ticket has the support of those Peronists leaders with strong, defined turfs that among other things helped to pull Argentina out of the chaos and anarchy which followed the 2001/2002 collapse when then President Fernando De la Rúa was forced to resign. But is must also be remembered that somehow they triggered what was to come with their sweeping victory in the 2001 mid term elections which gave them full control of Congress conditioning the weak De la Rua administration.