Murphy is a contender. Those USD140billion of capital flight have -perhaps- a chance of returning.
Murphy can send Argentinean elections to the second round.
Message 18846330
Murphy winning could be a very good prospect for LATAM. He could do a Lula and staterd being loved and paraded as an example of the IMF policies (IMF needs this badly). He can make the propscts brighter for LATAM to take a lot of this money that will be flying out the US in the next couple of years.
Late surge keeps Argentines guessing over next president By Adam Thomson in Buenos Aires
Adam Thomson
Financial Times; Apr 26, 2003
A surprising last-minute surge by a centre-right independent candidate yesterday promised to make Argentina's presidential elections one of the closest in history.
With just a day to go before polling stations opened across the country, an Ipsos-Mora y Araujo poll showed Ricardo López Murphy, a former economy minister and fiscal hawk, would take second place with 18.1 per cent of the vote.
That result would guarantee Mr López Murphy one of two places in a second-round run-off, scheduled for May 18. Everyone has now dismissed the possibility of a candidate winning outright in tomorrow's vote.
According to the poll, the other place in the run-off would go to Carlos Menem, the business-friendly former president. He leads with 20.1 per cent. Néstor Kirchner, a centre-left candidate and favourite of the Duhalde government, has dropped to third place - albeit by only 0.2 percentage points.
In a direct reference to the proposals of Mr Menem and Mr López Murphy, Mr Kirchner warned voters on Thursday that tomorrow's election was a choice between "the concentration of economic power that brought famine and desperation and a model of production, employment and social inclusion".
Mr López Murphy's popularity has snow-balled in the closing stages of the campaign. Last month, according to Ipsos-Mora y Araujo, the independent was placed last out of the five candidates thought to have a chance. His recent success owes much to the breakdown in the two-party system that has dominated Argentine politics, as people have become disillusioned with the broken promises of the country's traditional political class.
Until recently Mr López Murphy was a member of the Radical party, together with the Peronists one of the two traditional political forces. But he has managed to distance himself from his political roots by focusing his discourse increasingly on the need for political reform. |
