Election Results in Argentina Bring About Relief and Optimism to the Jewish Community

The victory of Raul Alfonsin in this country’s presidential elections last Sunday “has brought about a note of relief and optimism” to the Jewish community, according to Prof. Manuel Tenenbaum, executive director of the Latin American Branch of the World Jewish Congress.

He also noted that in the aftermath of the elections, which was a stunning defeat for the Peronists, the recent anti-Semitic resurgence in the country “seems to have quieted down for the time being.”

Alfonsin, a former Congressman and co-founder of the Argentine Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, was the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, a middle class party. He won 52 percent of the vote to 40 percent for Italo Luder, the Peronist candidate. The Peronists have dominated Argentina’s political scene since their party was founded in 1945 by Juan Peron.

ROLE OF THE JEWISH ELECTORATE

Tenenbaum pointed out that the Jewish voters in last Sunday’s elections behaved in the same manner as the general electorate and “spoke up clearly in favor of Alfonsin.” He stressed that the pro-Alfonsin vote of the Jewish electorate was motivated both by general considerations as well as those concerns particularly felt by the Jewish community.

“The Jewish voter, like the average voter, wished to vote for democratic institutional life and for an option of change,” Tenenbaum said. “On the strictly Jewish level, he believed that (Alfonsin’s) Radical Party offered more guarantees, due to its democratic make-up and its rejection of xenophobic trends.”

The Jewish vote, he pointed out, was important only in the district of the federal capital, where it comprised about nine percent of the total. There were no Jewish candidates for any significant posts, and only a few small parties directed their campaign specifically to the Jewish voter, among them the Social Democrat and the Christian Democrat parties.

EXPECTATIONS OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Tenenbaum summed up several expectations of the Jewish community in the aftermath of the elections: promulgation of a penal law outlawing anti-Semitism, non-inclusion in the public school system of subjects or matters which might irritate Jewish sensitivity, elimination of the invisible hurdles that block Jewish access to certain public posts, and a foreign policy of balance with regard to the problems of the Middle East.

On the eve of the elections, the DAIA, the central representative body of Argentine Jewry, published a statement in the general press in which “it reaffirmed its unwavering policy of total neutrality with regard to the different political trends.”

In a general assessment, Tenenbaum said that the election results displayed two fundamental traits: “Its undoubted democratic nature and the desire for change on the part of the voters who broke not only with the immediate past but also with forty years of Argentine politics dominated by Peronist hegemony.”