The Argentine legislative elections of 1960 was held on 27 March. Voters chose their legislators, and with a turnout of 87%.
Background
President
Arturo Frondizi
Arturo Frondizi Ércoli (October 28, 1908 – April 18, 1995) was an Argentines, Argentine lawyer, journalist, teacher and politician, who was elected President of Argentina and ruled between May 1, 1958 and March 29, 1962, when he was over ...
had been elected in 1958 largely with the endorsement of the exiled, populist leader,
Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón (, , ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President of a military dictatorship, he was elected P ...
. Military and conservative pressure made the president unable to lift the 1955 ban imposed on
Peronism
Peronism, also called justicialism,. The Justicialist Party is the main Peronist party in Argentina, it derives its name from the concept of social justice., name=, group= is an Argentine political movement based on the ideas and legacy of Ar ...
- though Peronists had other reasons for breaking with Frondizi ahead of the 1960 elections. Contrary to his platform, he appointed ultra-conservative economist
Alvaro Alsogaray, whose
austerity
Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. There are three primary types of austerity measures: higher taxes to fund spend ...
program helped lead to a doubling of prices in 1959 (a record, up to that time) and sharp recession.
[Todo Argentina: 1959 ]
Recommending the casting of
blank vote
A protest vote (also called a blank, null, spoiled, or " none of the above" vote) is a vote cast in an election to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates or the current political system. Protest voting takes a variety of forms ...
s, Perón took care to deprive Frondizi of potential anti-peronist support by revealing their earlier, secret deal: Peronist support in 1958 in exchange for restored political rights.
[Rock, David. ''Argentina: 1516-1982''. University of California Press, 1987.] A year marked with labor strife was followed by the bombing of a
Shell Petroleum
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New Yo ...
facility in March 1960, leading to the enactment of the
Conintes Plan - a further, severe limitation on political freedoms.
Frondizi bore the brunt of public disapproval over these developments; in reality, however, both decisions were signed on the insistence of the
Argentine military, many of whom were unambiguous on their willingness to overthrow the president (Conintes, in particular was signed in lieu of military demands for
martial law
Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory.
Use
Marti ...
).
[Potash, Robert. ''The Army and Politics in Argentina''. Stanford University Press, 1996.] Frondizi's
UCRI
The Intransigent Radical Civic Union ( es, Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente, UCRI) was a political party of Argentina.
The UCRI developed from the centrist Radical Civic Union in 1956, following a split at the party's convention in Tucumán. ...
congressional candidates went from nearly half the 1958 vote to only 27% - though they retained their overall majority since its loss of seats was more moderate (mostly to
Ricardo Balbín
Ricardo Balbín (29 July 1904 – 9 September 1981) was an Argentine lawyer and politician, and one of the most important figures of the centrist Radical Civic Union (UCR), for which he was the presidential nominee four times: in 1951, 1958, an ...
's more conservative UCR-P). Peronists' blank votes resulted in one of the highest such incidences (25%) in Argentine electoral history.
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Results
Results by province
References
{{Argentine elections
1960
1960 elections in Argentina
March 1960 events in South America