President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner hugs Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in a file photo.
Opposition avoids espousing preference but touts possible Pacific Alliance links
Brazilians will be heading to the polls tomorrow, but in Argentina, Kirchnerite politicians have decided — President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) should win a second term. They clearly see her as the best bet for bilateral relations and the continuity of the Mercosur trade bloc.
In contrast, the opposition has largely chosen to stay on the sidelines but revealed some of their own preferences regarding trade policy — the Mercosur may be a valuable tool but the Pacific Alliance is worth considering for the future.
In Brazil, Marina Silva (Brazilian Socialist Party, PSB) and Aécio Neves (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB) are fighting neck-and-neck for the second-place slot to make it into a runoff.
And while very few local politicians expressed outright support for any of the challengers, the sympathy with the Pacific Alliance — a trade bloc formed by Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico — can be considered an either/or option to the Mercosur, which establishes that its members cannot establish bilateral trade agreements without the involvement of the other member-states of the bloc.
Trade policy has been one of the discussion topics in the Brazilian election with Silva of the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) suggesting that her presidency could reorient Brazil away from the Mercosur and drop import tariffs, in line with the position held by the largest of the Sao Paulo industrialists. In turn, Brazilian Trade Minister Mauro Borges last week said that such a liberalization of trade policy would be a “disaster.”
The debate is hardly minor considering 20 percent of Argentina’s total exports and the biggest proportion of added-value exports are sent to Brazil. Argentina’s imports of Brazilian goods also play a significant support for the small and medium-sized producers that would be faced with increased international competitions if import tariffs are reduced.
‘For Argentina’s sake’
In Buenos Aires, former foreign minister and FpV hopeful Jorge Taiana told the Herald that “on top of the personal sympathies that I have for Dilma, I want her to win for Argentina’s sake. The PT is the government that has best understood the process that Argentina is going through, with whom it has been most possible work together with on integration, despite some of the difficulties.”
Concerning Silva, Taiana said that she has a “very interesting record but I think that lately she has leaned toward more orthodox proposals and she is expressing the interests of sectors that are less oriented toward South America and the Mercosur and vouching for the return to international markets such as the United States.”
The former foreign minister was also careful to note that the structural links and the relative strategic importance that the Brazilian and Argentine economies have for each other would mean that even a Silva victory would not mean that the Mercosur would dissolve, but perhaps a Brazilian foreign policy that would resemble a “open regionalism like in the 1990s.”
A source close to Buenos Aires province Governor Daniel Scioli told this newspaper that he clearly favours a Rousseff re-election. The revelation is hardly surprising considering Scioli has met several times and has a good relationship with the former governor of Rio de Janeiro state, Sérgio Cabral of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). The PMDB has been a coalition partner of the PT dating back to former Brazilian president Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s government.
Lula has also been a determinant voice in the election homestretch, successfully bolstering Rousseff’s numbers after Silva’s rise to prominence following the sudden death of PSB presidential candidate Eduardo Campos in an accident in mid-August.
Defence Minister Agustín Rossi, another staunch Kirchnerite supporter and FpV presidential hopeful, left no room for doubts as he joined the chorus of support for the incumbent, hailing the importance that Brasilia has given to the Mercosur and the Unasur.
“We would undoubtedly support the continuity of the Dilma administration. Both the eight years of Lula and the four years of Dilma have marked a before and after in the country’s history — not only in terms of economic development, making Brazil a world power, but also tackling inequality,” Rossi told the Herald, while also noting that he felt that the leadership of the FpV favours Rousseff.
Yet it was not just Kirchnerites who expressed support for Rousseff. One of the president’s biggest opponents at the provincial level is also rooting for Dilma.
“I’ve been following Brazil’s political process very closely from the time when I was an ambassador (to Brazil during the Carlos Menem presidency). I would clearly vote for Dilma in order to join Lula’s choice, because of the economic and social changes they brought to Brazil,” Córdoba province Governor José Manuel de la Sota told the Herald from Mexico, where he was taking part in a conference against human trafficking. De la Sota is part of a dissident Peronist camp and is actively trying to build a presidential bid.
Regarding Marina Silva’s call to reform Mercosur, De la Sota was pretty clear.
“I would vote for a government that seeks to strengthen Mercosur, not to distance itself from it. Brazil is an inevitable partner for Argentina: we need to go out together to sell food to the world,” he told the Herald.
Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance
Silva’s campaign manifesto supports further integration with the Pacific Alliance and the idea of a two-speed solution for the Mercosur, whereby Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay would sign an free-trade agreement with the European Union, even if Argentina fails to do so.
Months before Silva took over the PSB candidacy she travelled to Buenos Aires upon the invitation of UNEN Senator Fernando “Pino” Solanas as a vice-presidential candidate. Both candidates have deep environmentalist convictions and a recent column by Solanas in the Perfil newspaper made it clear that he supported her as a candidate in favour of “change” and he predicted that a Silva victory would result in reciprocal support in terms of Argentine politics.
Socialist lawmaker and UNEN presidential hopeful Hermes Binner was also present during Silva’s May visit to Rosario but refused to answer whether he favoured her candidacy, only saying that “whomever wins, the situation with the Mercosur isn’t going to change,” adding that the UNEN coalition is keen on increasing a Latin American integration and strengthening the Mercosur. Binner did not comment when asked by the Herald how a Silva presidency could be counted on to strengthen Mercosur.
For some of the candidates consulted about the significance of a potential Silva victory, the Pacific Alliance appeared without prompting. UNEN presidential hopeful Julio Cobos, hinted that the future of Argentine-Brazilian relations depended on the Mercosur “but without prejudice for an eventual approach toward the Pacific Alliance.”
UNEN Senator Ernesto Sanz would not pick a preference either but he has in the past emphasized the importance the party that he chairs, the Radical Party, has held with establishing a strategic relationship with Brazil.
Ful vio Pompeo, responsible for the international affairs side of Mauricio Macri’s presidential campaign, skirted the question about any sympathies or preferences that the PRO leader may have for the candidates. However, a glimmer of the PRO camp’s position shone through when asked about the relative importance of the Mercosur for Argentina, where he added that there is a need to “relaunch the strategic relationship with Brazil through the Mercosur while also looking for convergence with the Pacific Alliance.”
Another source close to Macri pointed out there is no unanimity within the PRO leadership about the candidates, suggesting the issue was not a priority considering they do not foresee any major changes to Brazilian foreign policy.
Renewal Front leader Sergio Massa was in attendance at a luncheon earlier this week during which Uruguayan presidential candidate Alberto Lacalle Pou of the National Party declared that he would be seeking the end of the prohibition on Mercosur members from establishing bilateral free trade agreements on their own. Massa warmly embraced Lacalle Pou during the luncheon but would not be drawn on the Brazilian elections.
His spokesman Claudio Ambrosini told the Herald that Massa “does not usually speak about foreign policy.” When pressed about the importance of the elections for Argentina and Massa’s, Ambrosini argued that said that Massa would say that it would be best for the “Brazilians make that decision.”
Neves left out
Notably, Neves suffered from lower visibility among some of the Argentine politicians currently preparing their 2015 presidential bids. Going in to this election weekend Neves had been in third place for polling, but in recent days has edged much closer to Silva than in the recent weeks (see page 8).
His role as potential kingmaker in a hypothetical run-off did not crop up in conversations with the candidates but if he manages to sneak past Silva into a head-on battle with Rousseff, the local political leadership will have to figure out what it means not only for bilateral relations but their own presidential bids.
Fonte: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/171364/kirchnerites-staunchly-back-dilma-reelection
