Area: Latin America - ARI Nº 73/2003 (Translation from Spanish) 5/19/2003 Menem’s withdrawal and the Future of Argentina Carlos Malamud ∗ Subject: On 14 May Carlos Menem said he would not run for office in the second round of the Argentinean presidential elections. This act of political irresponsibility left the presidency open to Néstor Kirchner but, at the same time, questioned the legitimacy of the new president and undermined the country’s democratic institutions. Summary: The second round of the elections for a new president of Argentina was due to be held on 18 May. The results of the first round, held on 27 April, left two Peronist candidates for the run-off: the former president Carlos Menem and the governor of the province of Santa Cruz, Néstor Kirchner. However, after a huddle with his supporters, Menem threw in the towel, leaving the way to the presidency clear for his political rival. The motives for Menem’s retirement are varied; they respond to personal concerns and the interests of the clique that surrounds him. More importantly, his refusal to take part carries negative consequences for democracy in Argentina. This irresponsible decision by Menem robs the new president of legitimacy, by granting him office with the support of only 22% of the population (the figure he obtained in the first round), instead of the landslide of around 70% forecast by opinion polls. Even with such a positive mandate, the new administration would have faced a difficult task, requiring a rapid search for consensus. That search is now essential. The way in which Kirchner forms his government, resolves the internal problems besetting the Justice Party (JP) and defines his relationship with outgoing president Eduardo Duhalde will determine whether Argentina can be governed or not. Analysis: On 22 August 1951, on the broad Ninth of July Avenue in Buenos Aires, the Justice Party held its famous ‘Open Conclave’ to proclaim the dual candidacy of Juan and Eva Perón for the 1952 presidential elections. The choice was the result of trade union and popular pressure, which saw ‘Evita’ as the key to obtaining many of their political, social and economic wishes. But the idea of his wife running for office was not particularly warming for Perón, fearful of a negative response from the military, the Church and other important centres of power, not to mention the threat of competition from Evita herself. There, to the loud dismay of an assembly nearly a million strong, Evita could be seen to waver under the intense pressure being brought to bear. She agreed to desist, with the oft-quoted words: “Comrades, I do not give up the struggle, only the honours”. That day, known as the “Day of the Renunciation”, together with the mass demonstration of 17 October 1945 called the “Day of Loyalty”, form part of the essence of Peronism. It thus came as no surprise that in his televised speech from his native La Rioja province, the by then ex-candidate Carlos Menem should paraphrase Evita’s words (“I renounce the titles, not the struggle”) to underline his adopted role as the true guardian of the Peronist ∗ Carlos Malamud Senior Analyst, Latin American Real Instituto Elcano 1 Area: Latin America - ARI Nº 73/2003 (Translation from Spanish) Date 19/5/2003 faith. He went further, hauling out of the history books the confrontation in the period running from 1973 to 1976 between Perón’s followers and the left wing of the movement led by the montonero guerrillas when he referred to Kirchner’s activities as a member of the Peronist Youth, when he formed part of the so-called ‘revolutionary tendency’, considered close to, possibly part of, that guerrilla organisation. Said Menem on television: “There were two options for voters: one put forward by a member of the montoneros; the other, mine, from someone who fought the montoneros.” With this pointless gesture, Menem meant to stand tall as the champion of true Peronism, for two reasons: firstly, to imply that he was acting in obedience to the Peronist tradition and, secondly, in another move condemned to dismal failure, to gather round him the Peronist host by virtue of the links uniting Menenism and Peronism. Much has been said about why Menem should take such a step. According to Menem’s own interpretation, “the conditions [were] not right for a second round. It was a sham election.” However, as more than one commentator has been at pains to remind him, claims of election rigging should be made in the courts, not in the media, a sure sign of Menem’s lack of evidence of any fraudulent behaviour by the Duhalde administration. His desperate words show that the decision not to run (in many people’s view, an act of sheer cowardice) had other motives. One doubt in people’s minds relates to the origin of the move. Was it Menem’s own idea or was he forced into it by members of his own entourage, clearly concerned about their own political future? To what extent was it influenced by the threat of new or revived allegations of corruption? In one of the many tense meetings with his closest colleagues in the hours preceding the decision to pull out, one of the three provincial governors (those of La Pampa, La Rioja and Salta) who had openly rooted for Menem said to him: “You will lose in my province, and we won’t let you drag us down with you.” The sentence exemplifies the reasoning of those like his brother Eduardo who feared being overwhelmed by Menem’s defeat and doubted not an instant in sacrificing their leader rather than face political doom at his side. In spite of everything, Menem was fully aware of what he was doing. A few minutes before recording his last message as candidate before the television cameras he said, “I shall look like a coward.” He knew that his attitude clearly contradicted one of the main emotional planks of his election campaign in the first round: his virility. This is not an anecdotal matter in a society with such a machista political culture as Argentina. The ex- candidate himself had gone to great lengths to stress the fact that he was about to be a father. Up until the fateful moment, Menem was still a man capable of making a woman with child, albeit by artificial insemination. Today, that image is in tatters. His decision to back out of the elections was firmly rejected by the public, as it was by political commentators and cartoonists. While the former stressed Menem’s timidity more or less politely, the latter pointed ribald fun at the decision, calling him a yellow-belly and a wet, with much graphic use made of helicopters (in which one of his successors, Fernando de la Rúa, fled at the collapse of his government), of the ex-president’s lack of personal dignity, along with plenty of other, much grosser, comparisons. Such was the tragicomic manner in which what the editor of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación dubbed “a 36-hour farce” drew to a close, amid expletives from all and sundry, institutional uncertainty, denunciations and counter denunciations, and some pretty foul rumours. Among the latter should be included that which tried to involve Ricardo López Murphy in the operation, something that was roundly denied by López himself and his party, when they attacked both Menem and the outgoing president Duhalde in a press conference: “In the present circumstances in which Argentina finds itself, we are fully convinced,” they said, “that a political solution requires complete and total respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. This means that the election should take place or, if this cannot be because one of the candidates renounces his claim, then events should 2 Area: Latin America - ARI Nº 73/2003 (Translation from Spanish) Date 19/5/2003 proceed as laid down in the code governing state elections. The institutions must emerge strengthened from these unthinking acts”. Menem’s conduct revealed his total disdain for democratic institutions and, in the process, his nature as a true son of Peronist authoritarianism, mounting guard over the same sacred ark he had previously laid claim to with his references to Evita and the allegations of Kirchner’s links with the montoneros. His contempt for institutional democracy and his return to the retrograde populism of Peronism was similarly reflected in the following sentences: “Let Kirchner keep his 22 per cent. I have the people. (...) I won the first round; I will not abandon the struggle.” His running mate, Juan Carlos Romero, governor of Salta, made the point even clearer when he spat out, “we’ve wrecked their chance of voting against Menem.” In an article published on Saturday, 17 May, in the newspaper Clarín, Romero went on to justify Menem’s decision in terms that reveal the underlying attitude of Menem’s provincial adherents. On repeated occasions in the months leading up to the vote, I said that there was a strong likelihood that, given the widespread dislike felt for Menem, in the event of a second round Argentina would experience something very similar to the ‘Le Pen effect’ seen in the French presidential elections. Menem’s decision not to run meant that my prediction could not be verified, though the opinion polls were practically unanimous in forecasting a clear 70/30 victory by Néstor Kirchner. The comparison with the French results leads to another conclusion on Menem’s decision, which is that, unlike Le Pen’s case, behind Menem there is no ongoing political project with staying power, nothing but the abject use of power by his clique.