Argentina's power-hungry provincial governors

Re-election out of fashion

Less than four months after Misiones Governor Carlos Rovira’s dreams of indefinite re-election were crushed in constituent assembly elections, La Rioja’s provincial legislature has defied national government pressures and a mob invasion to close the door on Governor Angel Maza’s bid for a fourth term. In the 2003 presidential elections no less than 60 percent of the vote went to candidates who were or had been the multi-term governors of provinces with indefinite re-election: namely, La Rioja’s Carlos Menem, Néstor Kirchner of Santa Cruz and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá of San Luis (i.e. three of only five provinces with indefinite re-election, which thus seems to be an unfairly decisive advantage for a politician). Today’s provincial strongmen have been reduced to puppets by their financial dependence on the central government yet dynastic politics seems simply to have moved to the national level.