Justicialist Party

The Justicialist Party was founded in 1947 by Juan and Evita Perón, and superseded the Labour Party on which Perón had been elected a year earlier. After the enactment of women's suffrage, the Female Peronist Party, led by the First Lady, was also established. All Peronist entities were banned from elections after 1955, when the Revolución Libertadora overthrew Perón, and civilian governments' attempt to lift Peronism's ban from legislative and local elections in 1962 and 1965 resulted in military coups.[20]

Basing itself on the policies espoused by Perón as Argentine president, the party's platform has from its inception centered on populism, and its most consistent base of support has historically been the General Confederation of Labor, Argentina's largest trade union. Perón ordered the mass nationalization of public services, strategic industries, and the critical farm export sector; enacted progressive labor laws and social reforms; and accelerated public works investment.[20]

His tenure also favored technical schools, harassed university staff, and promoted urbanization as it raised taxes on the agrarian sector. Those trends earned Peronism the loyalty of much of the working and lower classes but helped alienate the upper and middle classes of society. Censorship and repression intensified, and following his loss of support from the influential Argentine Catholic Church, Perón was ultimately and violently deposed in a 1955 coup.[20]

The alignment of groups as supporting or opposing Peronism has largely endured, but the policies of Peronism itself varied greatly over the subsequent decades, as did increasingly those put forth by its many competing figures. During Perón's exile, it became a big tent party united almost solely by its support for the aging leader's return. A series of violent incidents, as well as Perón's negotiations with both the military regime and diverse political factions, helped lead to his return to Argentina in 1973 and to his election in September that year.[21]

An impasse followed in which the party had a place both for leftist armed organizations such as Montoneros, and far-right factions such as José López Rega's Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance. Following Perón's death in 1974, however, the tenuous understanding disintegrated, and a wave of political violence ensued, ultimately resulting in the March 1976 coup. The Dirty War of the late 1970s, which cost hundreds of Peronists (among thousands more) their lives, solidified the party's populist outlook, particularly following the failure of conservative Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz's free trade and deregulatory policies after 1980.[21]

In the first democratic elections after the end of the dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process, in 1983, the Justicialist Party lost to the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Six years later, it returned to power with Carlos Menem, during whose term the Constitution was reformed to allow for presidential reelection. Menem (1989–1999) adopted neoliberal right-wing policies which changed the overall image of the party.[22]

The Justicialist Party was defeated by a coalition formed by the UCR and the centre-left FrePaSo (itself a left-wing offshoot of the PJ) in 1999, but regained political weight in the 2001 legislative elections, and was ultimately left in charge of managing the selection of an interim president after the economic collapse of December 2001. Justicialist Eduardo Duhalde, chosen by Congress, ruled during 2002 and part of 2003.[22]

The 2003 elections saw the constituency of the party split in three, as Carlos Menem, Néstor Kirchner (backed by Duhalde) and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá ran for the presidency leading different party coalitions. After Kirchner's victory, the party started to align behind his leadership, moving slightly to the left.[23][24]

The Justicialist Party effectively broke apart in the 2005 legislative elections when two factions ran for a Senate seat in Buenos Aires Province: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (then the first lady) and Hilda González de Duhalde (wife of former president Duhalde). The campaign was particularly vicious. Kirchner's side allied with other minor forces and presented itself as a heterodox, left-leaning Front for Victory (FpV), while Duhalde's side stuck to older Peronist tradition. González de Duhalde's defeat to her opponent marked, according to many political analysts, the end to Duhalde's dominance over the province, and was followed by a steady defection of his supporters to the winner's side.

Néstor Kirchner proposed the entry of the party into the Socialist International in February 2008. His dominance of the party was undermined, however, by the 2008 Argentine government conflict with the agricultural sector, when a bill raising export taxes was introduced with presidential support. Subsequent growers' lockouts helped result in the defection of numerous Peronists from the FpV caucus, and further losses during the 2009 mid-term elections resulted in the loss of the FpV absolute majorities in both houses of Congress.[25]

In 2015, the PJ, with its presidential candidate Daniel Scioli, was defeated by the Cambiemos coalition. Mauricio Macri was inaugurated as President of Argentina, ending 12 years of Kirchnerism.

However, in the elections of 2019, the PJ joined the Frente de Todos, which won the presidential elections. The PJ returned to power, with Alberto Fernández as President of the nation.

From its foundation, the Justicialist Party has been a Peronist catch-all party,[26] which focuses on the figure of Juan Perón and his wife, Eva, with economic populist ideals.

From the return of Perón in 1973 and under the leadership of Isabel Perón, the Justicialist Party was no longer characterized by anti-imperialist and revolutionary tones but by a strong focus on anticommunism (of which it became the main bulwark in South America) and the support of economic liberalism.

That line continued even after the military dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process, with the government of Carlos Menem until that of Eduardo Duhalde. The party moved from being a Third Position to a centre-right party, while rival Radical Civic Union acted as a centre-left party.

Since 2003, the party has undergone an abrupt revolution, with the rise of a faction known as the Front for Victory, led by Néstor Kirchner. The policies and ideology of that faction were dubbed Kirchnerism, a mix of socialism, left-wing nationalism and radicalism. Kirchner was elected President of Argentina and soon became a popular left-wing figure. The party shifted to left-wing populist, while Radical Civic Union joined with other anti-Kirchnerist centrist and center-right parties include Republican Proposal. After his death in 2010, his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, took over the leadership of the Front for Victory, which continues to be a major faction of the Justicialist Party, with the chairman of the party being José Luis Gioja.

The party is headed by a National Committee, whose president is the de facto leader of the party.

• 1946–1974: Juan Domingo Perón
• 1974–1985: María Estela Martínez
• 1985–1990: Antonio Cafiero
• 1990–2001: Carlos Saúl Menem
• 2001: Ruben Marín (interim)
• 2001–2003: Carlos Saúl Menem
• 2003–2004: Eduardo Fellner
• 2004–2005: (No leader)
• 2005–2008: Ramón Ruiz
• 2008–2009: Néstor Kirchner
• 2009–2010: Daniel Scioli (interim)
• 2010: Néstor Kirchner
• 2010–2014: Daniel Scioli (interim)
• 2016–2018: José Luis Gioja
• 2018: Luis Barrionuevo (judicial controller)
• 2018–present: José Luis Gioja

• Official site