Macri to consolidate non-Peronist vote

Mauricio Macri (right), Elisa Carrio and Ernesto Sanz held a meeting before the elections last week.

Message of unity could be key for October as PRO leader expected to trounce Sanz, Carrió

After a few bumps in the road, the Let’s Change (Cambiemos) coalition faces the first test of relative strength for its parts as it selects a presidential nominee.

Mauricio Macri of the PRO has been tipped to win out against his rivals Ernesto Sanz of the Radical party (UCR) and Elisa Carrió of the Civic Coalition (CC), with attention focused instead on the margin of victory and to what extent the losing contenders in the primary rally behind the winner in the run up to the October general election.

Tonight will be crucial to set that tone.

The coalition has also agreed to shared lists for its national lawmaker candidates in various provinces and for some of the Parlasur slots, with the goal of creating a legislative bloc in the next Congress.

A ‘win-win’

Billed as the most competitive challenge to the ruling Victory Front (FpV) and Daniel Scioli’s bid to succeed President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Let’s Change has built its platform around a shift in gears while seeking to draw on Macri’s name recognition and popularity as a candidate and the UCR’s nationwide territorial presence.

Despite inroads in recent months, the PRO remains a party that is centred around Buenos Aires City and lacks the party structure and presence in many of the provinces to mount a presidential campaign on its own.

The UCR, in addition to competing for some of the same kind of voters as the PRO, has been unable in recent years to field a competitive candidate. In the most recent presidential elections, Ricardo Alfonsín placed third behind Socialist Hermes Binner, with less than 2.5 million votes — good enough for just over 11 percent of the vote.

The Radical leadership sees today’s primaries as a win-win. Even if the predictions are accurate and Macri takes the nomination, the UCR has been able to negotiate the inclusion of its candidates on ballots and there is a vague promise of coalition government should the PRO be elected. Carrió has indicated that she has already “won,” arguing that “I generated this agreement so the republic wins, not me.”

The creation of the coalition had to nonetheless overcome strong initial resistance to any kind of association with Macri from prominent Radicals, including Senator Gerardo Morales (Jujuy) and former vice-president Julio Cobos, and howls of discontent from the the left-wing elements of the party. Ultimately the position favoured by Sanz — who also happens to be the UCR Chairman — triumphed over the stance supported Radicals in the North and South who had cut provincial deals with Sergio Massa’s Renewal Front (FR), in which the UCR agreed to broad anti-Kirchnerite primaries and not simply an anti-Peronist primary.

Macri and the PRO reportedly vetoed any kind of national-level arrangement, a rejection that followed into the key Buenos Aires province while the the FR, PRO and UCR cooperated elsewhere, such as Mendoza. Although the coalition has not picked up as many provinces as it would have liked, the win in Mendoza was followed up by better-than-expected results in Córdoba, where the PRO backed the Radical candidate.

Carrió famously stormed out of the UNEN-Broad Front in November of 2014 after a long dispute with her coalition partners about what role should be given, if any, to Macri. Eager to push for the broadest possible non-Peronist alternative to Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli and Renewal Front leader Sergio Massa, Carrió was unable to convince the leading UNEN presidential candidates in Julio Cobos (Radical party, UCR) and Hermes Binner (Socialist Party) to strike an alliance with the PRO.

Bumps in the road

Despite these broad agreements, there have been plenty of skirmishes in the run-up to today’s vote.

In Buenos Aires province, for example, a joint PRO-UCR list will be competing against the Civic Coalition after the CC complained that it had been poorly treated. Radicals in Buenos Aires province also grumbled about the relative distribution on the joint list with the PRO — the first Radical, Miguel Bazze, appears fourth on the ticket. Bazze had been among the group that most resisted to any kind of electoral coalition between the UCR and the PRO but has since changed tack and is likely to be re-elected to Congress.

There has also been internal sniping over the Buenos Aires City elections, when ECO candidate Martín Lousteau ran against Horacio Rodríguez Larreta in a runoff that threatened to upend Macri’s ambitions. Lousteau complained that the PRO was engaging in dirty campaign tricks and resisted thinly-veiled suggestions from the yellow party to withdraw his bid. Sanz openly encouraged Lousteau to keep his bid alive, endorsing his criticism of the PRO and earning a reciprocal endorsement form the defeated candidate, who vowed to never cast a ballot for Macri.

Bumps in the road have also been seen following Macri’s recent shift toward the centre of the political spectrum, which opened the door for Civic Coalition leader Carrió and Radical party Senator Sanz to pick up more anti-Kirchnerite votes for the Let’s Change (Cambiemos) front.

“I don’t need to shift closer to the government,” said Sanz a few weeks during a campaign event. “I have no problems with political consistency — I’ve held the same stance against Kirchnerism for 12 years.”

Throughout the primary campaign Macri has focused all of his rhetoric on the president and Scioli, seemingly comfortable with his chances and aware that he will need to hang on to all of his allies’ voters if he hopes to have a fighting chance in the general elections.

Herald staff

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