BUENOS AIRES: Argentine President Cristina Fernandez faces a mid-term primary election test on Sunday that will show whether she has enough popular support to push for a constitutional change allowing her to run for a third term in 2015.
Candidates for legislative elections in October were being chosen in yesterday’s open primary but, with no competition among candidates on the lists presented by each party, the vote serves more as a giant opinion poll on Fernandez’s six years in power.
The leftist leader has delivered steady economic growth and won re-election easily in 2011. But heavy government spending has fuelled annual inflation to over 20 percent, one of the world’s highest rates, while her combative style has upset investors and many voters in Latin America’s third-biggest economy.
Fernandez, 60, says she is not thinking about a possible third term, but talk persists that her congressional allies want the constitution changed to allow her to run again.
For that to happen, Fernandez would have to increase her control of Congress in October, when half the seats in the lower house will be up for grabs along with a third of the Senate.
Fernandez’s allies would need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to get debate started on permitting a third term.
“She doesn’t have that now and she won’t have it after October,” said Ignacio Labaqui, a Buenos Aires-based analyst for emerging markets consultancy Medley Global Advisors.
“But if the ruling party gets 40 percent or better at the national level, it could still claim to have a strong enough mandate to pressure the opposition into a bargain allowing the third-term amendment.”
Reuters
