Argentine voters look to Peron

Press, 7 June 1983, Page 20

Argentine voters look to Peron

By

BRIAN MOONEY,

of Reuters, in Madrid

The former Argentine President, Maria Estela Peron, who entered exile in Spain nearly two years ago, will have to decide in the next few months whether or not she wishes to be involved in her country’s political future, Peronist sources in Madrid say. The sources said the 53-year-old Mrs Peron, who took over the presidency on the death of her husband, Juan Domingo Peron, in 1974, knows that she faces a time of choice. “She must decide to renounce her political heritage for good or join in the process that will lead Argentina back to civilian rule,” said one source close to her. Maria Peron was Argentina’s last civilian President, but ruled for only two years before being toppled by the military. She was kept in detention for five years before being sent into exile in 1981.

The Peronist party, of which she is still nominally leader, has until August to decide on a presidential candidate for elections promised for October.

The Peronist sources said Mrs Peron could either endorse whatever candidate the Peronist party finally chose or, less likely accept the candidacy-herself in defiance of a military ban on her holding office.

Alternatively she might decide to stay silent, effectively ruling herself out from any direct involvement in Argentina’s immediate political future.

Her activity since coming to Spain in July, 1981, indicates she favours the last course, the sources said.

Mrs Peron has systematically and ruthlessly tried to break with

the past and renounced almost all her former associates both from Madrid and Argentina, they said.

She even sacked a Spanish maid who was first employed when the Perons lived here in exile before Juan Domingo’s return to power in 1973. The maid, Feliza, followed the Perons back to Argentina and accompanied Maria Estela during her five years in detention.

She was sacked shortly after Mrs Peron returned to Madrid.

Other former friends, including Pilar, sister of the late Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, have been dropped from Mrs Perons ever smaller circle, the sources said.

“She has this almost paranoiac sense of betrayal about the past and feels that she was used and exploited,” one of the sources said. “This has determined her behaviour in exile. "She has become an almost total hermit.”

Mrs Peron refuses to see Peron-

ist politicians, but she is ready to travel and recently went to the Argentine Embassy to check that her passport was in order. By refusing to meet Argentine politicians, she is in a way playing her late husband’s game, and more astutely. Whatever her legacy, she carries a name that is still worth millions of unconditional votes in Argentina.

Her life in Spain is unspectacular. She lives in a substantial apartment close to Madrid’s Prado Museum and likes to go shopping and to romantic films, She also attends church frequently.

The sources said she keeps a diary and has written enough poetry to fill two volumes.

She is believed to receive money from an Argentine Government source, while the Spanish police provide her with an armed escort.