Argentine legislative election, 1997

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Argentina held national parliamentary elections on 26 October 1997. This election was the second time of the peronist Justicialist Party defeated since 1985, while Justicialist Party maintained control of the Congress.

Argentina federal republic in South America

Argentina, officially named the Argentine Republic, is a country located mostly in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2 (1,073,500 sq mi), Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, and the largest Spanish-speaking nation. The sovereign state is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires, which is the federal capital of the nation as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

Justicialist Party Argentine political party

The Justicialist Party, or PJ, is a Peronist political party in Argentina, and the largest component of the Peronist movement.

Contents

Results

The results were as follows:

Party/Electoral AllianceTotal SeatsVote Percentage
Justicialist Party 11836.4%
Alliance for Work, Justice and Education (led by the Radical Civic Union and FrePaSo)11145.9%
Regional parties227.2%
Action for the Republic 33.1%
others37.4%
Total seats257

[1]

Results map showing Deputies elected by province Mapa de las elecciones legislativas de 1997.png
Results map showing Deputies elected by province

Background

President Carlos Menem, who successfully campaigned to have the Argentine Constitution amended in 1994 largely for the sake of being eligible for a second term in office, won the 1995 election in a landslide. The clouds of recession gathered immediately, however, as Argentine business confidence struggled following the shock of the Mexican peso crisis. Unemployment in Argentina, already higher as a result of a wave of imports and sharp gains in productivity after 1990, leapt from 12% to 18% in the first half of 1995 and, as Argentines geared for the 1997 parliamentary mid-term elections two years later, the figure remained around 15% and wages, frozen at their 1994 level.

Carlos Menem Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999

Carlos Saúl Menem Akil is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from July 8, 1989 to December 10, 1999. He has been a Senator for La Rioja Province since December 10, 2005.

The Mexican peso crisis was a currency crisis sparked by the Mexican government's sudden devaluation of the peso against the U.S. dollar in December 1994, which became one of the first international financial crises ignited by capital flight.

Themselves beset by sharp divisions over how to confront President Menem, whose longtime pragmatism had given way to increasingly doctrinaire conservatism, the Justicialists' mainstay of support, the CGT labor union, joined smaller unions, leftist activists and the progressive FrePaSo (the runners-up in the 1995 elections) in a series of general strikes beginning August 1996.

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy promoting traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The central tenets of conservatism include tradition, human imperfection, hierarchy, authority, and property rights. Conservatives seek to preserve a range of institutions such as monarchy, religion, parliamentary government, and property rights, with the aim of emphasizing social stability and continuity. The more extreme elements—reactionaries—oppose modernism and seek a return to "the way things were".

General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) Argentinian trade union federation

The General Confederation of Labor of the Argentine Republic is a national trade union federation in Argentina founded on September 27, 1930, as the result of the merger of the USA and the COA trade unions. Nearly one out of five employed - and two out of three unionized workers in Argentina - belong to the CGT, one of the largest labor federations in the world.

Economic problems also led to a sudden increase in crime, particularly property crime, even during the vigorous recovery during 1996-97. Menem's erstwhile "ace of spades," Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, whose Convertibility Plan was lauded as the reason behind the "Argentine miracle" between 1991 and 1994 (in which the economy, following 16 years of zero growth, expanded by a third), became unpopular during the recession and strained relations with the President after publicly denouncing the influence of "mafias" within the administration. Cavallo was acrimoniously dismissed by the President in July 1996; but the January 1997 murder of Noticias newsmagazine photojournalist José Luis Cabezas and the subsequent implication of transport magnate Alfredo Yabrán in the crime lent credence to Cavallo's accusations and cost the ruling Justicialist Party further approval.

Domingo Cavallo Argentine politician

Domingo Felipe "Mingo" Cavallo is an Argentine economist and politician. He has a track record of public service and is known for implementing the Convertibilidad plan, which fixed the dollar-peso exchange rate at 1:1 between 1991 and 2001. This brought the Argentine inflation rate down from over 1,300% in 1990 to less than 20% in 1992 and nearly to zero during the rest of the 1990s. Guided by his politics, Argentina entered into one of the most difficult crisis in its history. He is also well known for implementing the corralito, which restrained Argentine citizens from withdrawing money from their bank accounts. This was followed by the December 2001 riots and the fall of President Fernando de la Rúa. In 2015, he was sentenced for embezzlement, following an appeal. A definitive sentence still awaits.

<i>Noticias</i> (magazine)

Noticias de la Semana is a weekly newsmagazine in Spanish published in Argentina, where it is known simply as Noticias (News). The magazine was founded by Jorge Fontevecchia in 1976 and published by him in a format similar to U.S. publications such as Time or Newsweek. Noticias was known as La Semana until 1989 and is widely considered the leading Spanish-language newsmagazine in the world.

José Luis Cabezas Argentine news photographer and reporter

José Luis Cabezas (1961–1997) was an Argentine news photographer and reporter who worked for Noticias, a leading local newsmagazine.

Presented with a unique opportunity following his once mighty party's poor showing at the 1995 polls, former President and UCR leader Raúl Alfonsín negotiated an alliance with the center-left FrePaSo and, though in a number of provinces - including the second-largest (Córdoba) - the UCR and FrePaSo ran on different slates, the Alliance won a majority of congressional seats in 13 of 23 provinces and in the city of Buenos Aires. The results marked the twilight of Menemists' dominance of Argentine politics. [2] [3]

Radical Civic Union Argentine political party

The Radical Civic Union is a centrist social-liberal political party in Argentina. The party has been ideologically heterogeneous, ranging from classical liberalism to social democracy. The UCR is a member of the Socialist International.

Raúl Alfonsín former President of Argentina (1983-89)

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín Foulkes was an Argentine lawyer and statesman who served as the President of Argentina from 10 December 1983 to 8 July 1989. Alfonsín was the first democratically elected president after more than seven years of military dictatorship and is considered the "father of modern democracy in Argentina". Born in Chascomús, Buenos Aires Province, he began his studies of law at the National University of La Plata and was a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires. He was affiliated with the Radical Civic Union (UCR), joining the faction of Ricardo Balbín after the party split.

Alliance for Work, Justice and Education

The Alliance for Work, Justice and Education was a party coalition in Argentina around the turn of the third millennium. It was born of the alliance of the Radical Civic Union (UCR), the Front for a Country in Solidarity (FrePaSo), and a number of smaller provincial parties, in 1997.


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References

  1. ↑ Clarín
  2. ↑ Todo Argentina: 1996
  3. ↑ Todo Argentina: 1997
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