The Peronist Congress held last week in the city of Buenos Aires exposed the party"s crisis and its internecine fights. The right-wingers, headed by Córdoba"s governor, De la Sota, clashed with the "progressive" strand, represented by the governor of the province of Santa Cruz, who was in turn booed by Duhalde"s loyalists. A bunch of top leaders quit the National Committee, while Duhalde and his troop are in wait of a negotiated solution.
The Peronist Party is in turmoil, with a split becoming a likely scenario in the foreseeable future. Duhalde, top party boss, proposed to go for a direct election of party authorities, with a single ticket headed by President Kirchner, whereas Kirchner himself is pondering whether he should tie his political destiny to the party at all. The crisis might even rock governance -clearly Kirchner"s most cherished asset- amid a tough negotiation with the IMF, an energetic crisis looming and a pending discussion with the provincial governors around the subsidies to be handed over to their administrations. We might be in for another politcal shake-up yet. The fragility of all the ruling institutions has been laid bare again -a vivid reminder of the as yet unresolved crisis of political representation, as a result of which Kirchner came to preside over the country.
A motley crew
The political background of Peronism"s access to office partly accounts for its present turmoil. Kirchner was sworn in as president after getting just 22% of the polls, whereas his predecessor, Duhalde, had to rush out of power after the killing of picketers at the hands of the police in a bridge blockade. Peronism itself -in contrast with the Radical Party and the center-left coalition Frepaso- could weather the storm, but has remained untouched by the crisis of political representation opened up in the wake of December 2001. President Kirchner likes to portray himself as an advocate of political rejuvenation, hence his legitimacy. But his party is part and parcel of the old sclerotic regime. A government"s spokesperson put it like this: "Those who were booed from the platform in our party congress are the same ones who get the widest support from the citizens on the streets, whereas those who are cheered by the party ranks can hardly walk down the streets without being abused." (La Nación, March 29). The Peronist apparatus as it is today is motley crew made up of rival factions, all of them relying on clienteles nourished by state relief or hand-outs. The clash between rival factions is part and parcel of this power dispute, between the national government on one side, and the governors, the mayors and the local caudillos on the other.
Hence, all rival factions reflect different interests that can hardly be reconciled with each other.
-Mr. De la Sota and Reutemann, Córdoba"s governor and Santa Fé senator respectively, represent a center of right strand within the party. The former has launched a ferocious attack on the present government, in an attempt to rally the old establishment and some sections of the export-oriented agribusiness oligarchy, who very annoyed with president Kirchner"s "imprudent" moves.
-President Kirchner"s followers, for their part, took on the former, trying to impose their dictates on the party as a whole and also build a stronghold from above, resorting to their official positions. Let us bear in mind that Kirchner himself was able to get into office thanks to Duhalde"s ranks, remaining as a marginal fringe within the party. Kirchner"s likes to portray himself as the ordinary citizen who has taken over official affairs, but he represents a petty bourgeois project devoid of any independence. While governing for the benefit of big business, he relies either on the old regime or else on his non-Peronist allies, to uphold its own project. It remains to be seen whether he will follow down the road of the Peronist dinosaurs or else decides to go his own way.
-Duhalde, top Peronist boss, is trying to act as a mediator between the government on one side, and his ranks on the other, trying to keep all fractions in the same boat -in line with the best Peronist traditions.
-Die-hard supporters of Duhalde and local caudillos, who pursue their own vested interests and seek to put limits to the growth of Kirchner"s fraction. This strand seems to be supported by Duhalde"s wife.
-The neoMenemist strand, former supporters of president Menem such as the governor of Salta, Romero, are presently negotiating with Kirchner, while trying to find a place in the sun.
New politics?
President Kirchner is a master faker. He speaks of the "national cause" while giving up to the sharks of international finance, Merrill Lynch. He refrains from putting an equal sign between the military waging a dirty war and the disappeared, but goes on to criminalize the protests of the picketers. He talks about refounding politics altogether and holds on to power thanks to Mr Duhalde"s favors. He likes to portray the present mayor of Buenos Aires city, Aníbal Ibarra as his non-party key ally, but alas! Ibarra is not precisely a faithful representative of "new politics". He came to power as a candidate of the now defunct Alianza (coalition between the Radical Party and the center-left Frepaso) and he had to run out of the county hall hidden in an ambulance back in December 2001, when protesters were storming the streets. He ordered the violent eviction of a former orphanage occupied by homeless families and also that of Brukman, the textile plant ran by its workers. If he still remains active on the political scene, this is just because President Kirchner threw his own lot behind him in the last city elections. Another "new" spin doctor is the ill-starred vicepresident of the former Alianza government, who unceremoniously quit his posiiton after a bribe scandal splashed the parliament.
So Kirchner wants to set up his own force. To uphold governance, he has been putting pressure onto the Peronist Party in an attempt to win the upper hand and muscle out Duhalde and his troops from the party"s top echelons. He has just decided to appoint a trustee in the province of Santiago del Estero, forcing the resignation of the local cronies there, a move that is clearly aimed against old Peronist dinosaurs now in retreat. If he fails in this endeavour inside the party, he will seek reliance on forces outside it, placing his bets on a polarization of the Peronist Party.
Kirchner"s progressive stance boils down to "rejuvenation" of a party apparatus that belongs to the old regime. At best, he might try to build a current of political careerists, specially those who were left adrift after the blow-up of traditional bipartisan politics.
Class independence
The Peronist Party congress is a reminder of what being "Peronist" means today. Kirchner has tried to give it a new lease of life by erecting a progressive facade, to try and relive a political movement devoid of any progressive features, which has been responsible for the implementation of neoliberal austerity in this country, in a move that smashed historical conquests that Peronism itself had introduced originally, at the time when it was a nationalistic bourgeois party.
President Kirchner"s agenda seeks to make the national strand of the bourgeoisie come together with labor, in a bloc that is meant to revive the class collaboration that Peronism has historically represented. But his agenda is at odds with the subordination to imperialism that he also advocates. Kirchner is no nationalist, then. He will not seek to draw people onto the streets for the sake of a "national cause", just because he does not seek to fight against imperialism. Quite otherwise, his present power is boosted by and relies on passivization of the mass movement -taking people out of the streets by resorting to hot-air rhetoric. Kirchner"s narrow-minded reformism will not deliver the goods for labor. Cross-party politics is just a trick that lacks any credibility at all once we take a look at his co-thinkers.
The working class and the people should not have any expectations in Peronism, whatever strand gains the upper hand. Labor should walk down the road of the class struggle and go for an open clash with the government. They must go on to conquer class independence to finish off the political engineering from above pursuing a rejuvenation of bourgeois institutions and the rotten bourgeois parties with them. The PTS once again makes clear that we need to build a political movement of labor, based on fighting unions, social movements and the class-minded left, to raise an anticapitalist and independent program, winning over the labor grassroots and the poor to our cause and making them break away with the union bureacuracy and Peronism altogether.
Passivization in the style of Kirchner
Kirchner is an agency of what we have called passivization. We have to go back to the turbulent days of December 2001, when thousands demanded All of them out! on the streets in order to understand the crisis within the Peronist Party. It has been three and a half years now since those heroic actions, which now seem to be withering away in the minds of the masses -with the media trying to misrepresent them all the time. De la Rúa had been voted into office by means of the universal suffrage. All the transitory presidents that followed in that chaotic summer were appointed behind people"s backs by a Congress that had been cordoned off by police forces. Back then, the people"s rage was aimed against the old regime and the representatives of the political caste. The institutions remained legal, but lost their legitimacy almost overnight. Duhalde succeeded in dealing with the turmoil, keeping the crisis at bay via the implementation of widespread state-sponsored relief. He made Peronism act as a trustee on behalf of the businesses of the "national bourgeoisie" -he brought in a massive devaluation of the peso and turned their dollar-pegged bad loans into deflated pesos ("pesificación"). Duhalde was then a bulwark of the regime, upholding its legality but failing to prop up its lost legitimacy.
When Kirchner was sworn in as president, he could capitalize on the growing passivity and apathy reigning in the mass movement, also earning the support of the middle class, that of Buenos Aires city first and foremost. Those social layers no longer resorted to "pot bangings" and remained on the sidelines in an expectant mood. The economic recovery has also helped Kirchner in his endeavour. He tried to distance himself from "old Peronism" at first, to try and win the support of the population and gain his own social base. Cross-party politics became the buzzword of the day. On top of that, he also brought in some token measures in the realm of human rights and engineered partial changes within the institutions. All this has gone hand in hand with a heated rhetoric on TV. But he is in power governing for the benefit of big business, and has busied himself trying to undo any attempt at a social opposition of his administration. That is why he has been actively promoting a co-opting of social movements, to make them play against one another and thus weaken them. President"s Kirchner main advantage is the expectations the masses have in a reform from above, rather than a change from below, which boosts his ability to cover all the institutions with a fresh coat of legitimacy.