This gave him absolute control over the many Peronist governors and members of the legislature.
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His successor, Carlos Menem, a Peronist, would carry out the free-market reforms he had eschewed.
It also marked the first time the Peronist movement was defeated in a free election.
It is made more laborious (though also perhaps more possible) by the disarray in Peronist ranks.
The Peronist opposition, which has a majority in the Senate, is rallying round Mr Menem.
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They face a reviving opposition, and a revolt from within the ruling Peronist party (see article).
He took formal charge of the ruling Peronist movement, routinely gave orders to ministers and oversaw economic policy.
The Peronist party, to which Kirchner belongs, was also defeated in the southern province of Tierra del Fuego.
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Carlos Menem, its Peronist president from 1989-99, privatised everything from oil to water.
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But the president, who has become deeply unpopular, has lost the confidence of much of her Peronist party, making that harder.
Many senior figures from Mr Menem's Peronist party, including the governors of the three largest provinces, stayed away from the wedding.
He can count on the support in Congress of most of his own Peronist party and of much of the opposition.
Mr Kiguel served as finance minister during the 1990s rule of Peronist president Carlos Menem, under former economy minister Roque Fernandez.
This week, Eduardo Duhalde, a former president and rival of Mr Kirchner's in the ruling Peronist party, stepped into the affair.
Jesuits writing in recent decades have also presented economic views which have little to do with a Peronist interpretation of social justice.
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Her opponent is Hilda Duhalde, the wife of former president Eduardo Duhalde, who represents a rival faction of the ruling Peronist Party.
His own, internally divided, Peronist party supports him mainly out of fear that, were he to fall, it might collapse with him.
The once-prosperous South American nation is today again ruled by a Peronist president and is sliding again into repression, inflation and poverty.
And splitting the Peronist vote might give a chance to the opposition.
They secured the support of legislators from the ruling Peronist movement to defeat an unpopular bill to increase taxes on farm exports.
Mr de la Rua's Radical party is the senior partner, the other being Frepaso, a collection of Peronist dissidents and former leftists.
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Ramallo, a former Peronist stronghold, swung to the Alliance in the election.
He leaves a deeply divided country where the gradual fractures of his Peronist party feed the hopes of a weak and fragmented opposition.
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But whoever wins the election will govern with a Peronist majority in the Senate, and a Supreme Court packed with Mr Menem's appointees.
The vote comes after a decade of rule by Carlos Menem, a rumbustious Peronist who turned into one of Latin America's firmest free-market reformers.
The Radical party, the non-Peronist pole of a two-party system since 1945, has all but disappeared: its official candidate won just 2% of the vote.
In last month's election for mayor of Buenos Aires city, he backed the soft-left incumbent, who defeated a challenger supported by the Peronist party machine.
In Misiones he went further, backing an independent against a Peronist.
That is the tradition among Peronist leaders, but it seemed unlikely when he limped into the Casa Rosada with just 22% of the vote in 2003.
Several other Peronist hopefuls (including Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, president for a week last December, and another frontrunner) also appear reluctant to step in to the feud.
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