Civic Coalition ARI - Creation and Political Representation

Creation and Political Representation

Elisa Carrió, a former Radical Civic Union (UCR) politician, created the ARI after the breakup of the government alliance that brought Fernando de la Rúa to the presidency in 1999.

The 2001 elections gave ARI 17 of the 257 seats in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, and one senator. Carrió got a 14.1% share of the vote in the 2003 presidential elections. In the 2005 elections, ARI won eight seats. In the 2007 elections, ARI won the governorship of the deep-south Province of Tierra del Fuego, when Fabiana Rios, an ARI deputy, defeated the pro-government candidate Hugo Cóccaro, on June 24, 2007. Tierra del Fuego is currently (as of 2008) the first and only province ruled by ARI.

The party has established itself as a major force in the City of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, and in the aforementioned Province of Tierra del Fuego.

In the presidential elections of 2007, Carrió came second, heading the Civic Coalition with Rubén Giustiniani. She obtained about 23% of the vote, coming in a second behind Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. She won the majority vote in two of the three largest cities of Argentina: Buenos Aires and Rosario, but she suffered a larger defeat in Buenos Aires Province, the most populated district, and could not force a run-off election. ARI did however win four Senate seats (2 of the City of Buenos Aires and 2 of Tierra del Fuego) and a considerable number of seats in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, with further Congress seats for other members of the Coalition.