Скачать или смотреть ARGENTINA: BUENOS AIRES: FERNANDO DE LA RUA WINS MAYORAL ELECTION

(1 Jul 1996) Natural Sound

In their first mayoral election, Buenos Aires voters chose an opposition party member to govern the capital's 3 million residents.

Senator Fernando de la Rua of the Radical Civic Union won comfortably with about 40 percent of Sunday's vote.

The results have been interpreted as a setback for both the Argentinean government and president Carlos Menem's party.

Thousands of de la Rua's followers gathered in central Buenos Aires to celebrate their leader's victory.

They carried red and white flags, the colours of the Radical Civic Union opposition party.

Senator Fernando de la Rua won comfortably the first-ever election for mayor of Argentina's federal capital.

Official results, with nearly 60 percent of votes counted, showed De la Rua with 39.7 percent, followed by Norberto La Porta, a 58-year-old high school teacher running for the centre-left FREPASO coalition, with 26.4 percent.

The Peronist-appointee incumbent, Jorge Dominguez, a 51-year-old businessman seen here voting got 18.8 percent of the vote.

Earlier, President Carlos Menem of the ruling Peronist Party recognized the 58-year-old lawyer's victory as "indisputable".

More than 2 million voters between the ages of 18 and 70 were eligible to cast ballots in the election to select the Buenos Aires mayor and 60 members of a constituent assembly.

The assembly will begin meeting July 29 to draw up a charter for the newly independent capital district.

It will also decide when the new mayor will take office and whether the city will be a self- governing municipality or become the country's 24th province.

The federal capital, long a stronghold of the centrist Radical party, has been governed by mayors appointed by the president and elected city councils since it was established as a political unit in 1880.

The system was changed by a new federal constitution approved in 1994, which stipulated that the capital would become a self-governing unit with a popularly elected mayor and city council.

De la Rua had held a comfortable lead in polls conducted throughout the nearly one- year campaign.

This election makes him a leading candidate for his party's presidential nomination in the 1999 national elections.

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