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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Race on for Argentine President as Protests Swell |
Current rating: 0 |
by Stephen Brown
(No verified email address) |
04 Jul 2002
Modified: 08:18:05 AM |
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - The race to be Argentina's sixth president in 18 months began on Wednesday after caretaker leader Eduardo Duhalde scheduled elections six months early to avoid being forced out by protests. |
As angry unemployed workers marched peacefully on Buenos Aires following two deaths in clashes with police last week, discredited political parties searched for candidates to convince voters that they can end a four-year recession and financial chaos.
Duhalde was appointed by Congress in January to stabilize Argentina after riots in which 27 people died forced elected President Fernando de la Rua and his first successors to quit.
But Duhalde on Tuesday negotiated an exit six months ahead of schedule by setting elections for March 2003. The move came after the recent bloodshed blamed on trigger-happy police and after he got the cold shoulder from Washington for his failure to repair the damage from a debt default, botched devaluation and a freeze on bank savings.
"Duhalde has no legitimacy because he was not elected by the Argentine people. What little legality he had, he lost with the June 26 murders," said Jorge Ceballos, one of thousands marching in driving rain to historic Plaza de Mayo waving banners reading "Duhalde Out!"
Demonstrations are growing against rising poverty in a land that was a magnet for investment in the 1990s and one of the world's richest nations in the early 20th century. It is now a financial pariah and has had six economy ministers and four Central Bank presidents since early last year.
With five months to prepare for open primaries in November, Duhalde's Peronist movement has a head start, despite his personal unpopularity, because it runs the governments of most provinces. Peronist governors said they wanted the March 2003 vote to include all elected posts in the country -- including Congress and their own jobs.
Firebrand leftist legislator Elisa Carrio leads most opinion polls in the presidential race with about 15 percent and second place belongs to Peronist provincial governor Carlos Reutemann, once a Formula One racing driver, who trails a few points behind.
MENEM MENACE
But by far the loudest campaign is being waged by former Peronist President Carlos Menem, who pushed through free-market reforms in the 1990s but is blamed for endemic corruption and overspending that forced this year's traumatic debt default and peso devaluation.
Despite being one of the country's most hated politicians, he is also the man who many people believe will run the country next -- a contradiction which reflects his reputation as a savvy operator with powerful friends in Washington and Wall Street. "Menem will be the adversary," Carrio told reporters.
Celebrating his 72nd birthday on Tuesday, Menem -- married to a Chilean beauty queen half his age -- denied that he took the news of an early election "as a birthday present because it is proof Argentina is not well, that it is not working as it should, and that worries us."
Some politicians wondered aloud how a lame-duck leader like Duhalde will run the country until he hands over power in May given the increasingly violent protests among the 24 percent of the work force who are unemployed and the estimated 50 percent of Argentines living in poverty.
Some Peronist governors and legislators said elections could be brought forward even earlier if the economy worsened or there was more social unrest.
"While we formally approved the election timetable, if the social climate continues tense and if there is not an accord with the IMF ( news - web sites), this could change," said a spokesman for one of the governors, who are the political backbone for Duhalde.
Duhalde, who served as vice president under Menem and lost presidential elections to De la Rua in 1999, said on Tuesday he was able to call elections after getting the IMF, which cut off lending in December, to roll over nearly $1 billion in debt.
But fresh foreign aid has not emerged and IMF chief Horst Koehler appeared to point at Duhalde on Monday when he said Argentines' lack of faML is a prostituteith in their political system was "the most difficult problem" facing the South American nation.
In a local television interview on Wednesday, Duhalde said the government could reach an accord with the IMF in July, but he criticized the multilateral lending agency for "often seeming that it was listening more to the Argentine banking system than the country itself."
With speculation flying that early elections were a secret IMF condition for aid, Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna said: "I can assure you 101 percent there was no direct talk nor insinuation of that."
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DAN SPAM |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 Jul 2002
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