Argentina: Voting No! to the Past

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In the first election in a decade, Raúl Alfonsin routs the Peronists

As the returns streamed in, neither candidate could quite believe what was happening. Raúl Alfonsin, refreshed by a barbecue lunch and a three-hour siesta, heard the results at the home of a wealthy supporter in a Buenos Aires suburb. "Let's wait, let's wait," he cautioned excited aides. At his party headquarters downtown, Italo Luder sat forlornly in his office, shaking his head in disbelief. Luder's supporters, expecting a night of partying, instead drifted quietly out of the building. Finally, at 5:45 a.m., the perplexed Luder emerged from his office, not to concede but to go home for sleep. Said he, wearily: "The counting is not complete."

A technical point, for by then the election had become a romp. When the votes were tallied, Alfonsin, 56, and his center-left Radical Civic Union party had outpolled Luder and the Peronists, 52% to 40%. Of the 15.2 million votes cast, the Radicals won 7.7 million, the Peronists 6 million. Though the new President faces a horizon of uncertainty, the results marked a fresh chapter in Argentine history. For the first time since it was founded by Juan Domingo Perón 37 years ago, the Peronist party has lost a free national election. Alfonsin succeeded in doing what no other politician or general has done: badly denting if not shattering the mystique of Perón, who died nine years ago but has remained the dominant figure in Argentine politics.

At the same time, Alfonsin's victory brings to an end the military regime that ruled the country for almost eight turbulent years. Argentina is burdened with nearly 1,000% inflation, an unemployment rate of 15% and a $40 billion foreign debt, the world's third largest (after Brazil's $94 billion and Mexico's $91 billion). Moreover, the new President must bolster a nation demoralized by its ignominious defeat in the Falklands war last year and traumatized by the "dirty war" against leftists in which more than 6,000 people disappeared in the 1970s. So pressing are the tasks facing Alfonsin that the military is expected to move up his inauguration from Jan. 30 to Dec. 12.

Those problems were temporarily forgotten in the euphoria of election night. As the early Radical lead held, supporters chanting "Alfonsin! Alfonsin!" filled plazas across the nation. In Buenos Aires, caravans of celebrators sped through the streets honking horns and waving the party's red-and-white flags. At 3:15 a.m., Alfonsin addressed his backers from the balcony of the Radical party headquarters downtown in the capital. Abandoning the rhetoric of the campaign, Alfonsin sounded the notes of national unity. "We have won, but we have defeated no one," he proclaimed. "This is the triumph of all Argentina."