Consultancies, analysts point to support of about 50 percent for gov’t stance

Support for the government in its struggle against holdout hedge funds, which could culminate in a default on July 30, is rising among regular citizens, a national survey by the Poliarquía showed yesterday.

With President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sending a delegation to sit down with the so-called vulture funds for the first time today — an encounter mediated by Judge Thomas Griesa’s “special master,” Daniel Pollack — the head of state has seen the population rally behind the government’s cause.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they viewed the government’s management of the issue as “positive,” 25 percent as “negative” and 21 percent as “regular.”

The 47 percent in favour was a nine percent improvement on the 40 percent guauged by Poliarquía halfway into June, just before the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear Argentina’s appeal against Griesa’s pari passu ruling, pushing the country to the brink of default. Back then, the negative outlook on the administration’s handling of the case rose to 31 percent.

Analía Del Franco, of Analogías, said her consultancy had seen an upward spike from 47.9 percent to 52.3 percent in the last week of the World Cup. However, she did not foresee a permanent change in terms of her image either for worse or for better as result of the holdout developments so far.

“It’s fairly logical that people would support the country, and not Judge Griesa,” she said.

“Her image has been strengthened, and there are three indicators with which to evaluate this development: first, an asessment of Cristina’s (Fernández de Kirchner) management of the conflict; second, the most drastic indicator, which is being in favour or against the government’s stance as a whole; and last, the political-electoral effect, Opinión Pública Servicios y Mercados (OPSM) consultancy director Enrique Zuleta Puceiro told the Herald.

He said the asessement of a “regular” perfomance in the first category is waning, with people increasing responding with either “positive” or “negative” in OPSM surveys, effectively splitting results in half.

However, Zuleta Puceiro noted that support for the government’s stance had closed in on 80 percent, with less than 20 percent neutral or favouring the holdouts.

The political analyst played down the relevance of the political-electoral effects of ongoing developments, as the president “has not even decided what candidate she will be backing at next year’s presidential elections.”

 

Electorally-speaking

“It could be (Lower House Speaker) Julián Domínguez, (Interior and Transport Minister) Florencio Randazzo or (Economy Minister) Axel Kicillof, among others, but I don’t think this will affect their chances.”

Asked specifically about the wear and tear accumulated by Kicillof, who has spearheaded the latest efforts to resolve the holdout conflict, Zuleta Puceiro said: “Quite the contrary, he has consolidated his position. We frequently asked people who they believed should lead the Cabinet over the last few months, Kicillof or Capitanich, and the former has edged ahead.”

“He no longer comes off as just an intellectual, but as a flexible, pragmatic negotiator who resolved the Paris Club and Repsol issues.”

With regard to the conflict’s definitive outcome, there was a degree of pesimism concerning the president’s image in the case of a default.

“‘I don’t see any scenario in which a default is positive, not even for Cristina’s ideology,” Alberto Bernal, a partner at Miami-based Bulltick Capital Markets, told Bloomberg this week.

“It would mean she defaults on the bonds that her late husband restructured,” Bernal said, referring to Fernández de Kirchner’s partner and predecessor as president, Néstor Kirchner. “She knows that the benefits from an accord would be enormous.”

Sergio Berensztein, a director at Polarquía until recently, explained to the Herald that the head of state had “touched a (popularity) floor after the devaluation, but her recovery ever since has been accentuated by her tough stance against the holdouts.”

“Clearly we’re not seeing a return to the positive opinion levels of 70 percent in 2011, but she has recovered from the floor of 25 percent nonetheless.”

Asked if he saw a long term political-electoral effect for this government, he said “there is so much yet to happen before August 2015 that I don’t think developments to date will be remembered.”

“Recall that in the legislative elections last year, Kirchnerism was defeated in the main districts largely due to an inmediate cause, which wasn’t economic,” he said in reference to Sergio Massa’s sudden appearance in the electoral fray.

 

Fuente: Buenos Aires Herald (Caba)