Ruling Party Won’t Comment on Defeat

The Peronist government licked its wounds and refused to discuss its historic defeat in midterm elections for the lower house of Congress at the hands of the new center-left opposition Alliance. The Alliance won 45.7% of the vote to the Peronists’ 36.2%. It was the worst Peronist Party electoral result in 10 years and the first time the party has been beaten in a national vote while in power since its founding by Juan and Eva Peron in the 1940s. President Carlos Menem’s 8-year-old government lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies. That puts the balance of power in the hands of small provincial parties.