Entrevista con Mario Riorda: The challenges of 2015

Political consultant Mario Riorda in a file photo.

By Manuel Barrientos
For the Herald

Political consultant Mario Riorda says people don't want a new president ‘to start from scratch’

Former dean of the School of Political Science at Córdoba’s Catholic University, Mario Riorda is a consultant on matters of political strategy and communication for several Latin American governments and political parties. In an interview with the Herald recently, he analyzed the positions taken by Kirchnerism and the opposition ahead of the 2015 presidential elections.

The 2011 primaries turned out to be a mere stopover on the way to the first round. Polling suggests that the 2015 presidential elections will be more competitive. Will the candidates need different strategies for the primaries and the general elections?

Generally speaking, the elites that take these decisions are not yet prepared to think and act strategically in terms of the primaries. It must be noted that our primaries were basically inspired by the Uruguayan system. Regardless of who wins, what is important in that model is that “the sum of A plus B” in the primaries synergizes and adds up toward the first round of voting. There the parties prepare for that: on average, there are two competitive candidates in each party and they even open up the possibility for a third internal option with limited chances of receiving votes. But the strategies used by the Argentine parties are still a long way from that.

Why is that?

Today the ruling party has six or seven candidates. As a result the idea of “principal favourites” is watered down. At a time when hyper-personalization is hegemonic on the global political scene, that diversity of candidates works against the positions taken thus far. The same thing occurs with UNEN. There the disaggregation is no accident, because there is no consideration of eventual leaderships. In turn, the PRO and Renewal Front tickets are missing a competitor. Both Mauricio Macri and Sergio Massa understand that hyper-personalism is more important than political parties in terms of electoral attraction, but they find themselves with the difficulty of how to increase their chances in the first round after the primaries.

In principle, it seems more likely that the Victory Front (FpV) and UNEN can thin down the number of candidates rather than the PRO and the Renewal Front pick up alternative candidates.

There is talk of “stand-in” candidates, but that expression is already pejorative to those who want to compete internally. The problem is that Argentina has a broken party system. On the other hand, in Uruguay there is stable party system. Today four clearly divided spheres are discernible: Kirchnerism, PRO, Renewal Front and UNEN. But it is very unlikely that the latter will consolidate in electoral terms. That is why it is likely that it will be co-opted (or partially overlapped) by the PRO and the Renewal Front.

Poliarquía consultancy head Eduardo Fidanza says that about 60 percent of Argentines today want “continuity with change.” What happens with those parties that have as their main thrust their strong opposition to the government?

In the 90s there was a swing from a state-centric conception to another one in which the market had much more power than the state. Then the process was reverted by Kirchnerism and the state once again became the preponderant actor. Along with Latin Americanization of the discourse, that pro-state vision is a very solid ideological position in a society that today is unlikely to want for mandates to start from scratch. In Argentina there hasn’t been in the political and social culture a process of taking in the lessons learned. But now even those who aren’t sympathetic to Kirchnerism are seeking to avoid the dialectics of trial and error and are trying to keep that which was useful. What do they want to change? It’s a worn-out cliché, but a change in “manners” and the direction of the economy. There isn’t a feeling that nothing works nor that drastic changes are required to the model.

With that in mind, what will be the primary themes of the campaign?

The debate over the repeal of laws that we saw a few weeks ago makes it possible to augur a similar model to the one we saw during the Brazilian presidential elections. That is to say that the textbook approach: “don’t abandon what has been done” from the ruling party and “change all that is bad” from the opposition. These are timeworn and blunt strategies, but also very effective. I don’t mean that there will be an ugly campaign, but one in which differentiation and the concept of adversaries will be very explicit in an effort to capture loyal voters. But the strategies for the runoff could be more moderate.

In that respect, what role could President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner play in the campaign?

Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner have played defining leaderships, which gave a certain stability to a broken party system that began to creak in 1999, dissolved in 2001 and re-emerged in 2003 and which has remained stable until now. Perhaps the difference in the elections after 2003 has been that those leaderships decreased the competition and established a system around dominant actors and diverse peripheral satellites that did not establish much collective action among themselves. That can change in 2015 when Fernández de Kirchner’s guiding leadership, which will continue to exist but will diminish relative to itself, will come to an end. However, the president retains enough strength to be the FpV’s kingmaker. That is not a minor detail, because the ruling party is guaranteed a good result in the primaries and the first round. Even though the numbers will fluctuate from now until the election time, it is unlikely that it will drop below a third of the total vote. Given that percentage, the president’s role will be decisive whether she chooses to support the candidates placed first and second in the running. That is, (BA province Governor) Daniel Scioli or (Interior and Transport Minister) Florencio Randazzo. The explanation is important — 100 percent of those who would vote for Scioli have been Fernández de Kirchner voters and that same is true for Randazzo. Today there is very little switching of allegiances by voters and that third of the population that is likely to vote for the ruling party has an emotional and identity-based link with Kirchnerism.

You mentioned that one of the main criticisms of the government has been for its “manners.”. However, it has managed to keep control of the public agenda and built a sense of belonging for a third of voters.

This government has identified a number of elements that are trends in contemporary politics and political communication in particular. If you ask me to define what political communication is, I would say that it is the attempt to control the public agenda. Therefore, achieving that control for more than 10 years is an important feat. Secondly, I define a “government myth” that which is considered a narrative. That is to say a symbolic message anchored in values with the function of generating hope that once it is put into place can become self-perpetuating. For that government myth to work there has to be a complete match between discourse and action. In this multimedia age there are very few governments who have managed to crystallize this myth to this extent and depth. It is one of Kirchnerism’s virtues. But that myth cannot persist if one of its components begins to crumble. In Argentina the myth has been bolstered by and based around three value — social inclusion policies, economic growth and the identity policies linked to human rights, the Latin Americanization of the discourse, gay marriage, etcetera. In the last few years economic growth has been unsteady and the myth has been shaky in that regard. But the rest remains steadfast. Former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos said that to create a social awareness it is often necessary to push against the limits. This government pushed and pushed in a bid to transform and in some ways has wounded some of the institutions.

(publicada en Buenos Aires Herald, 17 de noviembre de 2014)