POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Menem’s Unpopularity Increases

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 18 1998 (IPS) - Argentine president Carlos Menem, his popularity rating in shreds, still insaists he will run for a third term if “the people” want him – and a new Constitution allows it.

The latest survey by the Center for Study of the New Majority shows only 15.4 percent of people polled have a “positive” opinion of the president, while 49.3 percent had a “negative” view of menem and 33.2 percent were “undecided.”

Last year, Menem’s “positive” rating was 18 percent and his current low is the worst in almost nine years of power. Not unrelated is the fact that, Menem’s economic policy, which in the past represented his political strong point also has declined.

In 1991, when he introduced his economic stabilization plan, support for Menem’s government was around 43 percent. High unemployment, poverty, increasingly unequal distribution, corruption, the lack of independence in the justice system, and the crises in education, health care and the social security system, however, have undermined his authority.

Since the beginning of Menem’s second presidential term in 1995, the polls have indicated a decline in his popularity. It would seem that – as Congressional representative Graciela Fernandez Meijide says – “the president has run out of a script”.

This opinion was echoed by former economics minister Domingo Cavallo, the main architect of the economic successes of Menem’s first period, when he managed to put an end to hyperinflation.

“Menem’s program is exhausted. Ever since he was reelected in 1995, he has run out of the audacity that characterized his first period and which allowed him to push forth economic reform and fight against corruption”, said Cavallo, who in 1996 left the government to form his own centrist party.

Despite the latest polls, only last weekend Menem pronounced himself in favor of a third term beginning in 1999, “if it is constitutionally possible and the people ask me”.

Menem did not discard running for a third term if the Supreme Court – which has come under increased scrutiny for alleged lack of impartiality – rules that the president cannot be “proscribed’

Menem’s aspirations appear similar to those of his Peruvian counterpart, Alberto Fujimori, who managed to get an interpretative law on the Constitution passed and thus enabled him to run for a third term.

The difference between Menem and Fujimori is that the Argentine president has many rivals willing to succeed him, both inside and outside own his party, some of whom have a better image in the polls.

The Argentine Constitution was reformed in 1994, by initiative of Menem himself, who sought a second term in office but was prohibited at the time by the Constitution. In the end, he secured an amendment to the constituion that shortened the presidential term from six to four years, and allowed one second consecutive period.

In past months, several leaders of the governing Justicialista Party, legislators, officials and former officials have been conducting judicial maneuvers and seeking legal measures to have Menem’s second period interpreted as his first, and to conduct a referendum for another Constitutional reform.

Until now, Menem had maintained himself distant from these moves, but on Saturday, he surprised everyone by making a personal announcement that if he perceives that the Justicialista Party is going to lose in 1999, he will accept the candidacy, as long as the Constitution allows it and the people ask him.

Menem’s announcement not only provoked strong reactions from the new opposition Alliance, which has chances of winning in 1999. There was a strong rejection within his own Justicialista Party.

One of the most controversial comments made by Menem was that if he is not elected president in 1999, and a candidate from his party wins instead, “someone will be in office, but I will be in power”.

Menem thus reclaimed the slogan of his party’s founder, Juan Peron, who used it in 1973, when he was in exile and proscribed, and endorsed the winning candidate, Hector Campora.

Campora was president for only a few months, during which he lifted the proscriptions, making it possible for Peron to return, and called for general elections, which Peron won. It was his third presidential term.

Most annoyed by Menem’s declaration were the collaborators of the governor of Buenos Aires province, Eduardo Duhalde, the pre- candidate from the Justicialista Party mostly likely to succeed Menem.

Duhalde’s wife, Hilda Gonzalez, a Justicialista Party representative in Congress, said on Monday that Menem’s pronouncements “are not serious and they do a lot of damage to the Justicialista Party”. “The president underestimates the leaders of his party, and speaks as if no one but himself is capable of governing”.

The mayor of Buenos Aires, Fernando de la Rua, one of the pre- candidates for the opposition Alliance, said that Menem wants to “manipulate” the Constitution, and requested that the justice system rule explicitly on the impossibility of third term.