RIO DE JANEIRO, April 28 (UPI) -- It was politics as usual for Argentina and Paraguay in presidential elections this weekend, but what remains to be seen is if that means economics as usual, too.
"Two Latin American neighbors have pulled similarly discouraging political rabbits out of their hats," said Steffen Schmidt, professor of political science at Iowa State University, who specializes in Latin America.
"Argentina cannot seem to flee the Svengali-like control of old, has-been Peronist politicians like Carlos Menem, and Paraguay remains firmly in the grip of (the) discredited Colorado Party."
Argentina's Menem -- the scandal-ridden former president who was in office from 1989 to 1999 -- led the first-round vote in Argentina, winning 24.3 percent of the ballot.
The center-left and fellow Peronist Nestor Kirchner garnered 22 percent of votes in Argentina, pushing him into a second-round vote with Menem on May 18.
It is certain the powerful Peronists will have the next president.
What isn't clear is whether the next leader of Argentina -- beleaguered by acute economic and political mayhem of the last two years -- will have the support to lead the country from ruin.
"There is no voter mandate in this election, when none of the candidates received a quarter of the first-round votes," said John Carey, professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and now a visiting professor at Harvard.
"Whether they have the power (to push through reforms) depends on whether they can build an alliance among the governors and indirectly in the congress."
Menem and Kirchner have been the focus of a tough internal battle of the Peronists.
Kirchner is the hand-picked successor of President Eduardo Duhalde, and would be likely to embark on a leftish economic agenda that would see more government intervention than a Menem government.
Menem, 72, engages in strong free-market talk, and tells voters that with him they shall return to the heady days of the early 1990s, when Argentina's peso was pegged one-to-one with the dollar and many of its citizens easily afforded trips to Europe.
Now, after a December 2000 default, subsequent devaluation of the peso, and nearly 60 percent of its populace living in poverty, Argentina's next leader has a Herculean task before him: that of successfully reinserting the country into the land of the economically viable.
And because of that, Menem -- both vilified and deified by Argentines -- has the better record on which many voters may wish to vote, some analysts say.
Despite an arms-dealing scandal that ended in Menem's five-month house arrest in 2001, Carey thinks that the memory of Menem as leader during the last rich days Argentines knew will play in his favor.
"I think the polling booth has some element of the confessional: When you get in there, all bets are off," Carey said.
"It just may be that people draw the curtain, look back on the early 1990s and somehow believe that Menem can make it happen again. I think that is his best hope."
Polls, though, suggest that Menem is going to face hurdles in the second-round vote against Kirchner.
More than 50 percent of Argentines say they would never vote again for Menem.
Kirchner, 53, has youth and a successful track record in a sparsely populated province under his belt.
He has the backing of Duhalde -- long Menem's biggest rival amongst the Peronists -- and says he will continue popular Duhalde programs, such as stipends for the unemployed and tough populist talk against the country's foreign creditors.
By moving more to the left during his campaign, Kirchner gained nicely from the swath of Argentines who loathe the shadiness of Menem, yet are too afraid to embrace the country's truly left politicians.
"Whether Kirchner can wield the political skills and fortitude requisite to resuscitate Argentina from its terminal condition remains unclear," the Council on Hemispheric Affairs -- a Washington-based liberal think tank -- wrote in a Monday report.
"But it is certain that his victory would at least restore what little respectability the country had retained, but lost, by enabling Menem to win a plurality (in the first-round vote)."
Somewhat surprising to analysts was the third-place showing of Ricardo Lopez-Murphy, who polled 16.3 percent, the best electoral showing by an economically conservative candidate in Argentina since Marcelo de Alvear won the Presidency in 1922.
Lopez-Murphy -- a conservative economist and leader of his own political party -- had risen sharply in polls during the final weeks of the campaign, and investors were hopeful that he might slip into a second-round vote with Menem.
"I was a little bit surprised that Lopez-Murphy didn't do better than he did," Carey said.
"His biggest strength is in and around Buenos Aires, and my suspicion is that the polls may have been biased toward respondents in the area of the capital."
In Paraguay, Nicanor Duarte, 46, won the presidency Sunday with more than 37 percent of the vote. His win continues the Colorado Party's 56-year grip on power, despite economic upheaval and corruption scandals of the past decade.
On that, Moody's downgraded the country ceiling for foreign currency bonds and notes of Paraguay's debt.
"Political instability limits the ability of the authorities to address in any meaningful way the country's worsening macroeconomic imbalances," Moody's wrote in a Monday report.
"The results of Sunday's election are not expected to substantially improve the political climate of the country or its near-term economic prospects."
