Argentina to repair social damage
By Isabel Hilton
LONDON: In terms of British interest, there should be a quiet satisfaction at this week's change of regime in Argentina. Peronist governments have tended to view the Falkland Islands as a national cause. But the incoming president, who has defeated the Peronists, inherits serious problems with Argentina's more immediate neighbors -- Brazil and Paraguay -- and is more inclined to let sleeping sheep lie.
Democratic as ever, the Peronists, having just lost the presidency in a landslide to an alliance led by their historic rivals, the radicals, have threatened a transport strike on Dec. 10, the day that the outgoing president Carlos Menem is to hand over power to president-elect Fernando de la Rua.
It is a reminder that the last time Menem was in opposition -- to Raul Alfonsin in the 1980s -- he used Peronist trade union muscle to such devastating effect that he forced Alfonsin to give up power five months early.
This time Menem has said that if he had been the presidential candidate for last Sunday's election, he would have won. Menem changed the Argentine constitution once to allow himself two consecutive terms in office and he was certainly tempted to try it again.
Fortunately, he decided his chances of success were not high enough to risk attempting something that would have confirmed Argentina as a country that forever falls for the pathological charms of the caudillo (the military leader).
Now Menem must make do with the threat that he will run again in 2003 and his supporters are already plastering Buenos Aires with posters promising his return.
For now though, for Argentina's sake, we should just be glad that Menem is leaving the game without kicking the board over and is allowing Argentina a constitutional change of mandate -- the longest run of such changes this century. Argentine memories of de facto governments are fresh enough that each time they are avoided it remains a matter for congratulation.
There could hardly be a bigger contrast between the outgoing and the incoming presidents. Menem, a fan of hair dye and repeated plastic surgery, was in the caudillo style with a flamboyant private life and a machiavellian talent for political deals.
Wildly popular at first for the stabilizing effects of his free market economic policy, his government will also be remembered for the huge personal fortunes that the lucky few made from privatization, for the 14 percent unemployment rate and the fact that nearly half of Argentina's children now grow up in poverty.
Sunday's election was partly a punishment for that, but also, De la Rua would have us believe, a vote for morality and transparency after years of corruption associated with the Menem government.
De la Rua, who is often accused of dullness but not of corruption, faces the unenviable task of trying to repair some of the social damage of the Menem years without either political control of the parliament or a war chest.
The outgoing president bequeaths him the worst recession for a decade in an economy predicted to shrink by 3 percent this year and the Peronists still control half the nation's provinces and the Senate. Even in the lower house, De la Rua does not command a majority.
Whether the Peronists will allow De la Rua to govern remains to be seen. Menem is reported to be organizing a dinner for Dec. 5, five days before De la Rua takes over, at which he will launch his presidential campaign for 2003.
Perhaps he genuinely believes he will make a comeback, or perhaps he might be calculating that acting as though he might return to power could be a way of keeping at bay any legal consequences that might arise from his 10 years in power.
Either way, Argentina is facing a new political challenge: for most of this century, the country has been governed by men (and occasionally, women) who were less than democratic: even when they were civilian rather than military rulers, they tended to be men who saw the hand of history in their own arrival in power and saw perpetuating their rule as part of their duty to history.
Even in this recent run of elected governments that began with Raul Alfonsin (who regarded himself as the leader of a historic movement) in 1984, both the radicals and the Peronists have acted as though annihilating political opposition was the primary task of government.
Now De la Rua will have to negotiate, not just with Peronism but with other political forces, such as the party of the former finance minister, Domingo Cavallho. If he makes a success of it, he will have brought a long overdue political maturity to Argentina.
-- Guardian News Service
Window: ...Menem is leaving the game without kicking the board over and is allowing Argentina a constitutional change of mandate -- the longest run of such changes this century.