Opinion – Latinoamérica21: Has the democratic consensus in Argentina been broken?

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Argentine society is shocked by the failed assassination attempt on Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. While it remains to be seen whether this was an individual act or a wider conspiracy, it is an extremely serious event.

In the past, Argentines were shaken by episodes of similar magnitude, such as the military rebellions between 1987 and 1990, the attempt to take over a barracks in 1989 by the Movimiento Todos por la Patria-MTP, the attack on former president Raúl Alfonsín in 1991 , and the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the AMIA in 1994, among others. However, the particularity of this episode is that it takes place in the midst of a process of erosion of the democratic consensus that has been built since 1983.

What does the democratic consensus in Argentina consist of?

We can define democratic consensus as the existence of at least three basic conditions. First, the existence of mutual recognition of actors as adversaries and at the same time as legitimate interlocutors; second, the existence of electoral processes whose results are accepted (or at least tolerated) by the losers; and third, the exclusion of the use of physical and symbolic violence to resolve the political dispute.

The return of democracy in 1983 brought with it the emergence of a set of political practices in line with a certain consensual style. Party unity in the face of the 1987 Easter Week military revolt, the agreements that made the 1994 constitutional reform possible, Eduardo Duhalde’s near-coalition experience and the creation of the Dialogue Table sponsored by the Catholic Church in the context of the 2001 social crisis /2002 are examples of this greater inclination to compromise.

However, the process of establishing the new political regime was characterized by the absence of consociative pacts between political elites, such as those that took place in Venezuela and Colombia during the 1950s or in Spain during the 1970s.

The conflict between the new government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the agricultural organizations over “Resolution 125” constituted a turning point in the first months of 2008. This crisis re-established a dynamic of confrontation that had been practically abandoned since the return of democracy in 1983.

The return of the confrontation brought with it the emergence of a series of expressions aimed both at disqualifying the opponent and at exacerbating the (pre)existing divisions in Argentine society. In this context, terms of dubious explanatory capacity, but of unquestionable persuasive effectiveness, appeared, such as the category of “destitute”, and others that tend to political and personal degradation (“gorillas”) reappeared.

Despite this, the electoral results were generally accepted, or at least tolerated, by the losers, although there are some situations that deserve special attention. Former President Cristina Kirchner’s absence from Mauricio Macri’s inauguration ceremony was read as a gesture of disregard for the legitimacy of the 2015 election result.

The denunciations made by the then party Unidad Ciudadana in the 2017 legislative elections and a subsequent unusual celebration of the defeat of the ruling party in November 2021 represent a warning sign of the breakdown of the consensus on tolerance towards an unfavorable electoral result.

Likewise, the rarefied political climate of recent days has weakened the consensus on the rejection of the use of violence. This has happened in particular since the vice president’s appeal and request for conviction by prosecutor Diego Luciani, the demonstrations outside the vice president’s house, the clashes with the Buenos Aires police and the head of government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, before – presidential candidate for the Juntos por el Cambio coalition, and a series of cross threats to both the vice president and the prosecutor in the Vialidad case.

The danger of the naturalization of physical violence, in a society marked by the experience of “private” and “state” terrorism in the 1970s, remains latent.

Is the democratic consensus broken?

Without the danger of democratic regression or institutional rupture, but with a certain risk of autocratization, there is today in Argentina a political context characterized by a decrease in tolerance towards the adversary and adverse electoral results, a weakening of the consensus on the exclusion of violence, verbal and physical, as a resource, and the eternal return of “priist fantasies” in the ruling party.

The glass is not broken, but it is cracked.

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