By Charles Newbury
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
The presidential race here heated up Wednesday, as a leading candidate named the ruling party’s spin doctor as his running mate.
Buenos Aires Gov. Daniel Scioli, a frontrunner in the race for the ruling Front for Victory party, said Carlos Zannini has agreed to join him in the campaign.
“It is decided,” he told Clarin and La Nacion newspapers.
Scioli added that Zannini told him he is “proud” to run on his ticket.
The partnership comes after months of jockeying for position in the party ahead of the Aug. 26 election.
After months during which opposition parties were leading the polls, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner last month called on her party to narrow the number of candidates. That left two: Scioli and Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo.
But Fernandez, who cannot run for a third consecutive term, has yet to openly endorse either candidate.
By agreeing to partner Zannini with Scioli, commentators said this appears to be her choice.
“All the chips have been placed on Scioli,” Alberto Fernandez, a former Cabinet chief for the president, said on Radio Mitre.
Zannini has been in government since the ruling party came to power in 2003 under the president’s late husband, Nestor Kirchner.
Working behind the scenes as one of the closest aides to the president, Zannini is said to be a mastermind behind the party’s political maneuvering, including many of its decisions.
Fernandez said that with Zannini on board with Scioli – a more conservative and business-friendly voice in the party – there is more chance of extending Fernandez de Kirchner’s influence in the next four-year term, which starts Dec. 10.
“This is clear gesture of the domestication of Scioli,” he said of the Zannini deal. “We are going to have a vice president who is clearly a political deputy of Cristina.”
The ruling party wants to continue its political and economic model of helping the poor with social welfare and regulating big business with price controls, trade restrictions and other measures.
While this has brought it popular support, the economy slipped into recession last year under high inflation, this year at 30 percent annual. Many economists have blamed party ideology for slowing measures, for example, to cut inflation and spur investment. These include taking steps to return the country to global capital markets by fully settling a $100 billion default from 2001.
Nonetheless, Scioli is leading the race. A recent poll shows him with 30 percent of the vote, ahead of Buenos Aires City Mayor Mauricio Macri with 24 percent. In third with 14 percent is congressman Sergio Massa.
On hearing of the Scioli-Zannini partnership, Macri said he is not surprised because it shows the ruling party’s intention to continue with its way of doing things, which he said is confrontational and dividing society.
“We are not looking to confront,” the right-wing mayor said on Radio 10. “We are looking to put energy in concrete things.”
He added that he believes voters want a new party in power.
“There is more willingness to change than to continue in this way,” he said.
