Angry Argentines despair of their politicians
By Thomas Catán in Buenos Aires
Published: October 11 2001 17:12 | Last Updated: October 11 2001 18:03

With mid-term elections four days away, Oscar Mazza, a 22-year-old advertising employee, still has no idea who to vote for.

"I don't think that politicians are capable of implementing the changes the country needs," he says. "I don't believe in the political class or trust the party system."

Mr Mazza is not alone. On Sunday, Argentines will be electing half the lower house of Congress and the entire Senate in what would normally be considered an important election. It will, for example, be the first time that Argentines will be able to elect their senators directly.

But with the country struggling through its fourth year of recession, many Argentines say they don't much care who wins. Indeed, the signs are that Argentines are as angry and apathetic about party politics as they have been since the return of democracy in 1983.

Voting is mandatory in Argentina, but pollsters are predicting that turnout will barely exceed 70 per cent of registered voters. The proportion of voters spoiling their ballots or abstaining is likely to double nationwide, polls say, to 12 per cent or higher. In the city of Buenos Aires, where party loyalties are weaker, 40 per cent of voters say they intend to abstain or spoil their ballots.

According to available data, the government of Fernando de la Rúa is set to receive a severe setback at the polls on Sunday. The president is widely viewed as indecisive and incompetent; his approval ratings have fallen from the 70s to single digits in less than two years.

The ruling Alliance coalition, made up of the president's centre-left Radical party and the smaller leftist Frepaso, has virtually disintegrated.

In a somewhat disingenuous move, candidates from the Alliance are themselves running against the government. Even the president called on residents of the capital to vote for Rodolfo Terragno, who has campaigned for office on a solidly anti-government platform.

In relative terms, the opposition Peronist party is set to benefit from the government's woes. But neither party is likely to be celebrating too ostentatiously on October 15 if forecasts of the number of abstentions come true.

"This is a wake-up call for politicians that there is a severe crisis of representation," says Rosendo Fraga, a noted political analyst in Buenos Aires. "This could affect their legitimacy."

In the past two decades, politicians have largely replaced the military and other bogeymen in the popular imagination as the principal reason behind Argentina's spectacular 70-year decline.

In part, the problem is due to a lack of renewal among what Argentines call "the political class", because of their size and exclusivity. The same figures seem to go around and around on a political carousel for decades at a time regardless of the success or failure of their previous terms in office.

The race for senator in Buenos Aires province is a case in point. It pits Raúl Alfonsín, the septuagenarian former president whose term in office was cut short by an economic collapse in 1989, against the Peronist Eduardo Duhalde, the losing candidate in the 1999 presidential elections.

The moment would appear to be ripe for the emergence of a third parties in Argentina. But despite some false starts, most have failed to capture the popular imagination or collapsed amid infighting.

Given the lack of viable alternatives in this election, analysts say Argentina's enduring two-party system, which has survived a succession of military coups over the past 70 years, is likely to remain intact. But even as Argentines enjoy the longest period of democracy in seven decades, most are unhappy with its results.

In a call to arms ahead of his historic election in 1983, Mr Alfonsín, promised much for the return of democracy. "With democracy you eat, you cure, you educate," he said in an oft-quoted campaign speech.

It is a sign of the times in Argentina that the phrase now appears on a list of bad political jokes posted up on the internet.