Buenos Aires – With presidential elections two months away, provincial elections are seen as weather veins for the political winds blowing in Argentina, where first lady Kristina Kirchner is expected to become the first woman president.
A highly contested election in Cordoba Province saw Peronist candidate Juan Schiaretti claim victory in the ultimate hours, thereby continuing the Peronist parties grip on Cordoba for the third consecutive term. (The Peronist party is also the party of the President Kirchner and his wife, Kristina, who is that parties candidate in October.)
The opposition candidate has called for a vote-by-vote recount, stating, “I was prepared to win and I was prepared to lose, but I was not prepared to be robbed.”
In Santa Fe Province, home to the nation’s second largest city, Santa Fe, Congressman Hermes Binner, a Socialist candidate, surprised many analysts by decisively winning the governorship and thus bringing an end to 24 years of Peronist rule in the province.
Political experts in that province told Telam that “Socialism sells on the strength of its efficiency in small government.”
Some analysts cited the recent flurry of corruption scandals in the executive, a cause for unrest in middle class, urban centers like Sante Fe, as being responsible for an upset of the status quo.
The unexpected Socialist victory in Santa Fe, however, is unlikely to be reproduced at the national level, as Kirchner, a Peronist, along with her running mate, Julio Cobos, a Radical, attempt to reconcile differences among and between the nation’s two largest parties.
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