Julio Cobos, Argentine Vice President and likely presidential candidate for the 2011 elections, was welcomed back to the centrist Unión Cívica Radical on Friday, April 10. The UCR is Argentina’s strongest opposition party.
A career politician with the Radical Party, Cobos joined Peronist Cristina Fernández de Kircher’s campaign as Vice President in 2007, prompting the UCR to expell Cobos from the party “for life.”
Following the expulsion, however, Cobos rose to political stardom by asserting his independence from Argentina’s increasingly unpopular President. He has remained entirely estranged from President Fernández de Kirchner since casting the tie-breaking vote to kill a controversial export tax on agricultural products decreed by the President to combat food shortages. Cobos’ surge in popularity transformed him from party renegade to the UCR’s best chance at regaining the presidency.
Cobos took advantage of prominent Radical leader and former president Raúl Alfonsín’s death, publicly stating that he wanted to “put his strength behind [Radical] party unity, as Raúl Alfonsín asked on his deathbed” according to a report by Argentine daily Página/12.
Curiously, the decision to rescind the explusion will not apply until Cobos “has finished his term of office in the present government, because otherwise a conflict of interst would arise,” in the words of Elva Roulet of the UCR’s National Ethics Tribunal. This means that if Cobos runs for the presidency as anticipated, he will have to run as an unofficial Radical against the party of the administration he currently serves.
Image of Julio Cobos: Presidencia de la Nación Argentina (public domain).
