THE PRESIDENT-ELECT

ARTURO FRONDIZI is the 13th of 14 children born to a road and bridge contractor who moved to Argentina in the great migration from Italy in the 1890s. Born in the northern province of Corrientes, he reached the University of Buenos Aires in time to choose between the fashionable political trends of Argentina in the late '20s: the right-wing nationalists led by the Prussianized army, and the University leftists. Frondizi turned left, went in for Marx and Kropot-kin--but pulled up short of becoming a socialist or Communist. Instead, he breezed through law school in three years and turned down the school's Diploma of Honor because it was to have been presented by a military dictator who had just toppled the ruling Radicals.

This gesture gave him entree into Radical politics, but in the '30s he contented himself mostly with practicing law, reading history and economics (notably Lord Keynes). He opposed Juan Peron from the dictator's first appearance on the national scene. Frondizi joined Radical Chieftain Ricardo Balbin in leading the dogged Radical bloc (44 members ) in the Peron-dominated Congress (160 members).

All Things . . . Balbin and Frondizi ran against Peron in 1951 as Radical candidates for President and Vice President, were overwhelmed by the Peronista machine. Tenaciously. Frondizi set himself to work for another chance. His voice blasted at Peron on dark streets to little knots of approving Radicals. When the dictator eased up just before his fall in 1955. he chose Frondizi to speak for the opposition. Said Frondizi: the Radicals stand for the right "to think, to profess religion, to meet, to publish ideas."

After Peron's fall. Frondizi expertly maneuvered Balbin out of the Radical leadership. He won financing from industrialists by promising high tariffs; he won support from the Catholic Church by spurning the Radicals' advocacy of legalized divorce; he won Socialist and Communist approval by promises to expand the nationalization of oil, steel, rail, mining, telephone and power. He sharply attacked General Pedro Aramburu's provisional government, which gave him his chance to run. "Where do you stand?" he was asked once as he left Aramburu's office. "Just across the street." answered Frondizi. But he took pains to plant the idea that the armed forces would never suffer under President Frondizi.

... to all Voters. Most of all. Frondizi did not refer to his record as a Peron fighter, promised to bring Peronistas back into Argentina's political life. That may have cleared the way for his endorsement by Peron. Balbin, tagged as the traditionally suspected "official" candidate, and running on the ticket of a Radical splinter party, could not match the competition.

Frondizi is a cool intellectual who frowns more than he smiles, reads widely, speaks articulately and unemotionally. He stands a straight 6 ft., wears the alert expression of a pawnbroker examining a watch. He scorns tobacco, shows only mild interest in Argentina's famed beef and wines, bypasses most social occasions, reserves much of his personal warmth for his wife and daughter Elena. 20. His picture of the U.S., which he has never visited, is molded by intense admiration for Lincoln, modified by such reading as The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road. Argentina's international position, says President-Elect Frondizi is "among the Western powers, geographically and culturally."

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