February 16, 2015

AmericasBarometer:

Topical Brief – February 16, 2015

Response to Argentine Prosecutor’s Death Highlights Polarization and Mistrust of Institutions By Mason Moseley, University of Pennsylvania

n January 18, 2015, only hours O before presenting his case Figure 1. Increased Polarization in Approval of against current Argentine Argentina’s President, 2008‐2014 President Cristina Fernández de 25.0 19.53%

Kirchner in a special parliamentary 17.69% 20.0

hearing, federal prosecutor Alberto 14.16% Nisman was found dead in his Puerto 15.0 Madero apartment from a single 10.0 gunshot wound to the head. Nisman 6.39% % Evaluating President’s JobPresident’s Evaluating % had been investigating the devastating 5.0 Performance as ''Very Good'' or ''Very Bad'' ''Very or Good'' ''Very as Performance 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish 0.0 community center in Buenos Aires (the 2008 2010 2012 2014 Year 95 % Confidence Interval Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina ‐ (with Design-Effects) AMIA) for ten years, and alleged that Source:  AmericasBarometer, LAPOP, 2014: Draft0912 the current government had attempted to cover up Iran’s involvement in the to make a definitive determination attack in exchange for improved terms regarding the nature of Nisman’s of trade. It was even revealed that he death, a poll reported by The Economist had sought arrest warrants for showed that over seventy percent of President Kirchner and her Minister of porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) Foreign Affairs, Héctor Timerman, in believe Nisman was murdered (The the days before coming forth with his Economist 2015). charges.1 While investigators have yet

1 For more details on the Nisman case, see La Nación t53089) or the New York Times for coverage in English for local coverage in Spanish (www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/world/whodunit‐in‐ (www.lanacion.com.ar/la‐muerte‐de‐alberto‐nisman‐ obsessed‐nation‐question‐becomes‐who‐didnt.html).

Argentines have responded to detractors alike. Figure 1 illustrates the Nisman’s death with incredulity, anger, extent to which these divisions have and resignation, as many believe it grown between 2008 and 2014.4 In this signals another blow to the democratic six‐year period, the percentage of institutions of a country long stricken respondents who answered that the by institutional weakness and high president was doing either a “Very levels of corruption (Levitsky and bad” or “Very good” job more than Murillo 2005). Setting aside the tripled, and the portion of individuals considerable personal tragedy of the who maintained neutral views of situation, the country’s response Kirchner fell from nearly fifty percent highlights two important trends in to less than one in three. Put simply, Argentine public opinion: 1) the Argentines’ views of the president have deepening of political polarization moved towards the poles since her between pro‐ and anti‐Kirchneristas and tenure began. 2) widespread mistrust of formal political institutions, and belief that the When newspapers began reporting political system is fundamentally Nisman’s death, both Argentina’s corrupt. In this Topical Brief, I assess fragmented opposition and the public opinion on these two government moved swiftly to shape dimensions using data from the the narrative surrounding the tragedy. AmericasBarometer.2,3 Kirchner’s opponents, including the country’s largest media conglomerate Since her election in 2007, President and newspaper, Clarín, sought to Kirchner has increasingly become a implicate the government in the death lightning rod for Argentine public of a responsible civil servant who opinion. More brash in her public possessed damning evidence that could persona than her husband and destroy Kirchner. Conversely, the predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, and President herself first lamented more uncompromising in her pursuit Nisman’s apparent “suicide,” and then of political goals, Cristina Kirchner has only days later pivoted and suggested won many devout followers and Nisman was merely a pawn in a larger conspiracy to discredit her 2 Prior issues of the Insights Series can be found at: government. Many in Argentina have http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights.php. The data on which this report is based can be found at interpreted the news through these http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/survey‐data.php. 3 Funding for the 2014 round mainly came from the 4 Figure 1 is drawn from the following question: M1. United States Agency for International Development Speaking in general of the current administration, (USAID). Important sources of support were also the how would you rate the job performance of Inter‐American Development Bank (IADB) and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner? (1) Very Vanderbilt University. This Brief is solely produced good (2) Good (3) Neither good nor bad (fair) (4) Bad by LAPOP and the opinions expressed are those of (5) Very bad. Figure 1 displays the percentage of the author and do not necessarily reflect the point of respondents who responded either “Very good” or view of USAID or any other supporting agency. “Very bad” from 2008 to 2014.

partisan lenses, further underlining the growing reality that the country is Figure 2. Trust in the Executive in the Americas, deeply polarized. 2014

Dominican Republic 71.1 The second important trend Ecuador 69.4 Haiti 65.4 highlighted by the response to Nicaragua 61.2 Uruguay 60.2 Nisman’s death is Argentines’ lack of Chile 59.9 Bolivia 58.2 faith in the country’s formal political Honduras 55.9 El Salvador 55.0 institutions and processes. Argentina Paraguay 48.3 has typically ranked low even by Latin Guyana 45.5 Panama 43.9 American standards in terms of system Brazil 42.7 Canada 42.1 support (LAPOP 2008‐2014), and this Jamaica 41.8 Argentina 41.8 crisis has highlighted citizens’ distrust Colombia 40.2 Belize 39.5 of many of the key institutional actors Mexico 39.2 involved in the AMIA case, and now in United States 39.1 Peru 38.8 the investigation of Nisman’s death. Guatemala 38.5 Costa Rica 38.1 Trust in the judicial system, executive, Trinidad & Tobago 36.5 national legislature, and political Venezuela 35.6 0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 parties fell between 2012 and 2014, and Trust in Executive 95 % Confidence Interval will likely continue to plummet with (with Design-Effects) Source:  AmericasBarometer, LAPOP, 2014: Draft0912 the current scandal (though LAPOP’s time series does not extend to this point). Trust in the executive in By regional standards, Argentina ranks particular experienced a precipitous fall close to the top in public perceptions of between 2012 and 2014, dropping by corruption (LAPOP 2014; Figure 3).6 nearly twenty points on a 100‐point The absence of a commonly held scale to a score of 41.8, which places trusted authority that individuals Argentina in the bottom half of this believe could objectively investigate category regionally (Figure 2).5 In both Nisman’s allegations against the general, Argentines seem reluctant to government and the circumstances place their faith in any institutional surrounding his death has likely left actor, making it all the more difficult many Argentines doubting they will for many to interpret the events of ever know the truth of the events recent weeks and believe justice for the surrounding Nisman’s death. victims is imminent. 6 Figure 3 plots perceptions of corruption according to responses to the following question: EXC7. Taking into account your own experience or what you have 5 Trust in the executive is measured with the heard, corruption among public officials is: (1) Very following question: B21A. To what extent do you common (2) Common (3) Uncommon or (4) Very trust the President/Prime Minister? Respondents uncommon? For this report, this variable has been answered using a 1-7 scale, which was then rescaled rescaled from 0 to 100, with higher values indicating from 0 to 100. a belief that corruption is more common.

Figure 3. Perceptions of Corruption in the attack in Argentine history, which has Americas, 2014 gone unsolved for more than twenty years. The public’s response to his Venezuela 80.0 Colombia 79.6 death also further underscores the Argentina 79.0 depth of political divisions in Guyana 78.4 Peru 78.2 Argentina, and the profound mistrust Jamaica 78.1 of democratic institutions that have yet Paraguay 77.8 Dominican Republic 76.3 to show marked improvement – and Mexico 75.1

Belize 74.6 have from some perspectives, Guatemala 70.2 deteriorated – in more than thirty years Panama 69.4

Bolivia 68.0 of democratic governance. El Salvador 67.7 Honduras 67.3 United States 66.3 If Nisman was murdered, the Nicaragua 65.9 implications are clearly worse, Ecuador 64.1 Uruguay 62.4 revealing either the complicity of Haiti 62.1 domestic actors in the killing of a Canada 61.8

0.0 20.0 40.0 60.0 80.0 public servant, or the state’s inability to Evaluation of Public Corruption 95 % Confidence Interval protect a man whom many suspected, (with Design-Effects) Source:  AmericasBarometer, LAPOP, 2014: Draft0912 including the prosecutor himself, was in danger (La Nación 2015). Not to mention that if Nisman’s allegations Thousands plan to attend a mass against the government are demonstration on February 18 (dubbed corroborated, it would reveal #18F on Twitter) organized by federal unprecedented corruption at the very prosecutors in Nisman’s memory, highest levels of Argentine democracy, reinforcing the country’s continued and a government willing to barter reliance on protest demonstrations as a justice for the families of the eighty‐five form of democratic representation in AMIA victims in exchange for political the absence of trusted formal and economic gain. Prosecutor Gerardo institutions (Moseley 2014). Pollicita issued formal charges against the president on February 13, and an As others have noted, much remains to investigation into Nisman’s claims is be determined in both the investigation pending. of Nisman’s death and his allegations against the government (e.g. Zraick With the presidential election 2015), but the consequences appear approaching in October, and Kirchner serious regardless. If prosecutors find constitutionally prohibited from that Nisman committed suicide, it seeking a third term, 2015 promises to represents yet another setback in the be a pivotal year in determining the investigation of the deadliest terrorist future of Argentina’s democracy.

References Mason Moseley is a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Levitsky, Steven and M. Victoria Murillo. 2005. Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Constitutionalism (DCC) at the University of Pennsylvania. He can be reached at Weakness. Pennsylvania State University Press. [email protected].

Moseley, Mason. 2014. From Ballots to Blockades: Full results of the 2014 AmericasBarometer and The Normalization of Protest in Latin American previous rounds can be consulted on‐line at Democracies. Doctoral dissertation: Vanderbilt www.LapopSurveys.org. The full data set is available University. for on‐line analysis or download (in SPSS and Stata formats) at no cost. Zraick, Karen. Feb. 7, 2015. “The Mysterious Death of Alberto Nisman.” The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/07 /world/americas/08nisman.html

The Economist. Feb. 6, 2015. “Whoddunit? Argentina’s Scandal‐Struck President.” http://espresso.economist.com/2dda6cb791405d 0a19da2904062a6924?fsrc=scn%2Fesp%2Ffb

La Nación. Jan. 19, 2015. “Nisman: Yo puedo salir muerto de esto.” http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1761275‐alberto‐ nisman‐yo‐puedo‐salir‐muerto‐de‐esto