Election Setback May Jeopardize Alfonsin Plans : Loss of Lower-House Majority, Peronist Gains Viewed as Pivotal in Argentina

President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina faced the discouraging prospect Monday of diminished legislative support for his ambitious government programs after losing a lower-house majority in congressional elections.

While weakening Alfonsin’s four-year-old administration, the Sunday elections gave new strength to the labor-based Justicialist (Peronist) Party, Argentina’s second political force.

The shift in the political balance of power may jeopardize controversial government projects, such as rewriting the constitution and moving the national capital.

All members of Alfonsin’s Cabinet offered their resignations Monday, but no changes were announced. Presidential spokesman Jose Ignacio Lopez said the government was “in a stage of analysis and reflection.”

The elections were held to renew half of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as to choose governors and other provincial officials. No seats were at stake in the Senate, where Alfonsin’s centrist party, the Radical Civic Union, already lacks a majority.

Before the elections, Alfonsin’s party had a majority of 130 seats in the 254-member lower house, while the Peronists had 103 seats. According to still-incomplete returns Monday, the Radical Civic Union lost at least 13 seats while the Peronists gained five.

The other seats are held by several smaller parties. One of them, the Union of the Democratic Center, increased its representation from one to seven seats.

Nationwide, the Peronists received 41.4% of the votes, the Radicals 37.3%, and the Democratic Center 5.7%.

Guido di Tella, one of the newly elected Peronist congressmen, said the election results leave Alfonsin with the alternative of seeking an alliance with the Peronists or with some of the smaller parties.

“I think it is unlikely that we will join the government,” Di Tella said. “We would set conditions that I think would be impractical, and we are not eager to do it because it would be a mess.”

Di Tella and other Peronists said the vote was a “punishment” by Argentines for Alfonsin’s economic policy.

After a year and a half of controlled inflation, the cost of living has rocketed in the last two months, reducing the buying power of salaries. Inflation for August soared to nearly 14%.

Alfonsin has two more years to serve in his six-year term. His election in 1983 followed seven years of military rule, which began in 1976 with a coup against President Maria Estela Peron.

The administration of Peron, the widow of former President Juan D. Peron, was a chaotic period of political violence and economic disorder.

Sunday’s elections signaled a comeback for the Peronist party, previously handicapped at the polls by its troubled past, deep factional splits and lack of strong leadership.

The Peronists won 17 of the 21 governorships at stake in Sunday’s elections, while the Radicals won only two. Two gubernatorial contests are still undecided, and another was decided by elections in August.

The new star of the Peronist party is Antonio Cafiero, who beat his Radical opponent by a landslide Sunday in the election for the governorship of Buenos Aires province. The province is Argentina’s most important, accounting for more than one-third of the country’s total electorate.

Analysts say that Cafiero, 64, now has a good chance of unifying the party and running a strong campaign for the presidency in 1989.

“We are the principal force in the country,” Cafiero said triumphantly on Monday.

Alfonsin’s proposed constitutional reform would give Argentina a parliamentary form of government with a prime minister as its head. But the results of Sunday’s elections raise new doubts about his ability to get the two-thirds congressional majority needed for passage.

The new composition of the Chamber of Deputies also casts a shadow over his plan to move the Argentine capital to the Patagonian province of Rio Negro in the far south.

In fact, some analysts say the election results raise serious questions about Alfonsin’s chances for any major successes in the rest of his administration.

“He’s just going to have to scrounge around to make this thing float for the next two years,” said one analyst.