Carlos Menem in the Driver's Seat
SHAPIRO, Arthur M.
AS THE ARMY WATCHES Carlos Menem in the Driver's Seat By Arthur M. Shapiro "We cannot go any lower. They are telling us—Argentines!—to live like Chinese. Do you believe it?" The...
...Gassino, who was loyal to Alfonsin, is widely perceived as struggling valiantly to keep the hotheads among the colonels under some sort of control...
...Finally a deal was struck: Alfonsin submitted his resignation at the end of June and Carlos Saul Menem moved into the Casa Rosada July 8, in time for the July 9 national holiday...
...more important, it knows the public is aware of this...
...Whatever Peronism is, these things are not it...
...As the Labor Minister Menem picked Jorge Triaca, an old-time union boss never noted for his reluctance to cut deals with management...
...Despite the elasticity of Peronist rhetoric, it is hard to imagine Triaca getting better than a three- or fourmonth honeymoon...
...Their mad dash to convert australes into dollars set in motion a hyperinflation worse than any Menem could possibly cause...
...Nevertheless, as soon as the date of the succession was fixed Menem announced that his Economics Minister would be Miguel Roig, aretired CEO of Bunge and Born...
...Of all his undertakings, the only major one not stymied by politics or circumstances was the judgment of the juntas...
...it is as vile an epithet as one can be called in Argentine politics...
...Triaca immediately asked the unions for a two-year, strikefree "honeymoon...
...The biggest financial conglomerate in the country, it was denounced in Congress for "unconscionable profiteering" at the height of thecrisis...
...37 per cent for Radical Party candidate Eduardo Angeloz...
...Ironically, the catastrophic fall of the austral against the dollar was fueled primarily by apprehension among the well-todo that a Peronist victory would unleash uncontrollable inflation...
...Before the balloting, Argentina had been buzzing for months with rumors of Electoral College designs to deny Menem the Presidency...
...On April 24 the staterun TV abruptly canceled a retrospective called The Storehouse of Memory, because the Army Chief of Staff General Francisco Gassino complained that it was "demeaning to the military...
...Would he himself agree to undo it...
...The military knows it has no solutions to the current economic chaos...
...He let it be known from his nonetoo-stringent detention that in the event of such a conspiracy, his loyalists would enforce the popular will...
...Warning that his first act as President would be to impose austerity, he told his countrymen they wouldn't be able to afford gasoline anymore...
...The Army began to intrude into civilian life with a heavy-handedness not seen since Alfonsin's inauguration...
...The word has an odd history, deriving from "sepoy," and means more or less a mercenary or turncoat...
...In China and other parts of the world, people ride bicycles...
...On the other hand, organized labor was pressing him to act...
...The Radicals also lost both houses of Congress...
...Radicals, of course, say Menem asked Alfonsin to issue the pardon as his last official art, and Alfonsin refused...
...Menem and his advisers thus demonstrated as well that, if necessary, they were willing to risk the outrage of the Peronist rank and file...
...Turning the matter over to the people would have distinct advantages for Menem...
...Apparently it involves massive cuts in government spending, privatization of some state enterprises and improved efficiency (read: major layoffs) in others, and a gradual withdrawal of the government from the functioning of the market economy...
...One man evidently made uneasy by the whispering was Colonel Muhammad Ali Seineldin, leader of last December's abortive military insurrection...
...He was speaking to a people passionately attached to its automobiles...
...Party discipline is a chronic problem of Peronism, yet Menem seemed to have a green light to implement his programs—nebulous as they were—after his scheduled inauguration next December 10...
...The whole sequence of events has produced several surprises...
...Seineldin's duros have threatened open rebellion if the government does not grant the amnesty...
...Indeed, Saul Ubaldini, head of the Peronist General Confederation of Labor, has said as much...
...When after just a week in office Roig died suddenly of a heart attack, he was immediately replaced by another former Bunge and Born CEO, Nestor Rapanefli...
...Too much interference, it was said, with the driver's personal freedom...
...All of them, in fact, were on Alfonsin's agenda but were successfully thwarted by Peronist big labor, which called 13 nationwide general strikes in six years in response to the Radicals' much more timid moves...
...There is now talk that Menem might place the amnesty question on the ballot as a nationwide referendum...
...Menem was not eager to tackle the economic crisis early...
...It's good for the body," elaborated Menem, whose exploits as a racing-car driver had juiced up his macho image among voters...
...Menem talked during the campaign of a "Production Revolution," but no one knew what that meant...
...Lame-duck President Raul Alfonsin, however, in addition to seeing his Radical Party pummeled at the polls, had lost all credibility: The minimum wage had slipped to the equivalent of $22 a month, bread lines five blocks long were forming outside welfare offices, the printing presses were being retooled weekly to emit banknotes of ever more mtimidating denominations, businesses were failing by the thousands, and a tiny Leftist movement called the Worker's Party was organizing supermarket looting...
...By threatening a new uprising, Seineldin and his allies are engaging in psychological warfare, trying to force Menem to grant an amnesty by fiat...
...Menem's biggest problem, though, may be the military...
...This would reduce the new President to virtual captivity...
...What all this adds up to is a very slight probability of a coup against Menem, at least for some time...
...Menem says he refused...
...The threat clearly betrays their fear of losing in a national referendum...
...After the massacre last January 23 at the La Tablada military base—engineered, according to everyone in the know, by military intelligence, using agents provocateurs—there was little further talk of Montoneros...
...Still, down the road, there isavery high probability of a virtual coup in Menem's name—triggered by labor unrest, real or fabricated acts of " Leftist terrorism,' or incidents connected with an amnesty referendum...
...Something clearly needed to be done...
...At the start of thecampaign he was often accused of being sympathetic to the Montonero Left...
...As a result, he won a popular mandate, although not an absolute majority (47.2 per cent of the vote vs...
...After all, Alfonsin put the Beagle Channel treaty with Chile to a popular vote to get himself off the hook for " surrendering part of the national patrimony...
...So it would face tremendous domestic hostility if it attempted to oust the newly elected Peronist President, with the unions mobilizing to paralyze the country...
...With the approach of Election Day, the economy, which had been deteriorating for months, simply fell apart, assuring Menem's victory...
...Arthur M. Shapiro, a previous NL contributor, is a prof essor of zoology at the University of California, Davis, who frequently visits Argentina...
...the responsible military authorities counsel patience...
...Bunge and Born," for example, is a name that inspires fear and loathing in all Argentine populists, Peronists included...
...It remains his monument for Argentina's posterity...
...Internationally, too, any overt seizure of power on its part would be viewed as purely self-serving and not patriotically motivated...
...Regardless of the truth—and Alfonsin is not talking—the voluble Colonel Seineldin once again issued bombastic warnings from his confinement, characterizing Alfonsin as a cipayo...
...As it turned out, all the posturing was irrelevant...
...Thequestion became, rather, to what extent the military's demands would be met, and how fast...
...In any case, if there is a vote on amnesty, the electorate will go to the polls under the watchful eyes of the military—on bicycles...
...Buenos Aires was one of the last of the world's great cities to install traffic lights...
...As the end of Alfonsin's term neared, Menem told the press that the outgoing President had asked him to pardon the officers...
...Given his dangerous weaknesses, cynics say, he might not mind that so much...
...The military wants a full pardon and amnesty for its men convicted of human rights abuses during the "dirty war" of the 1970s, but is divided over how far to go to achieve that end...
...Even given Alfonsin's alleged depression, the story does not ring true...
...The provocation for that outburst by a friend in Buenos Aires was the advice then President-elect Carlos Saul Menem gave to the nation on June 22, after the Electoral College confirmed his May 14 victory...
...But in the Electoral College that translated into a landslide: 19 provinces and the territory of Tierra del Fuego went to Menem, while only three provinces and the Federal District of Buenos Aires (much smaller than the province) went to Angeloz...
...It was an astonishing act of bravado, intended to calm the business community and stem the outflow of capital...
Vol. 72 • July 1989 • No. 11
