POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Scandal-Laden Security Minister Resigns

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 31 2000 (IPS) - Former Lt-Col. Aldo Rico, who in the 1980s twice took up arms against Argentina’s democratic government, resigned Friday from his post as head of the Security Ministry of the nation’s most populous province, following a long chain of political scandals.

Rico, who founded a right-wing political movement in the 1990s and had served as legislative Deputy and mayor, was designated minister last December by the governor of Buenos Aires province, Carlos Ruckauf, who wanted to take a hard-line against crime.

Ruckauf, of the ‘Justicialista’ (Peronist) party, won the governor’s seat in last November’s elections with promises to establish safety, whatever the cost, in Buenos Aires province, which is characterised by expanding crime and charges of police corruption.

Unemployment and the lack of public safety are the Argentine population’s biggest concerns, according to polls, and Ruckauf tested the waters by naming the former rebel military officer as Security minister, in order to control the police and crime.

However, the poll respondents did not think reducing crime would be achieved through authoritarian leadership, which Rico is known for as a result of his two past attacks on the democratically elected government. The surveys indicate that people believe crime is increasing due to the lack of jobs and shoddy police performance.

The police are one of Argentina’s most discredited institutions. Officers from the Buenos Aires force have been involved in serious crimes, such as the 1994 bombing of a Jewish institution in the capital that killed 89 people, and the assassination of a journalist.

This month, it was revealed that the criminals responsible for a wave of bank heists were former inmates who were freed with falsified certificates of good-conduct, paid for by police who looked after them in exchange for commissions from the robberies.

The barrage of verbal attacks launched by Rico – a former ‘carapintada’ (painted face), as the military rebels were known, because they blackened their faces as a sign of war – meant Ruckauf had to repeatedly ask him to apologise for his offensive words against president Fernando de la Rúa, the press, and other “enemies.”

Until finally, after one last week of crisis, the governor accepted Rico’s resignation.

Graciela Romer, a sociologist and pollster for a firm that bears her name, emphasised that Rico’s leadership style is based on intolerance and rigid beliefs.

“The crises of his brief tenure demonstrate the risks politicians assume when they choose such leaders,” Romer stated.

Another political observer, Enrique Zuleta Puceiro, commented that the governor, who aspires to lead the opposition Justicialist Party and be its presidential candidate in 2003, “caricatured” and “over-acted” the lack of public safety when he designated Rico to the ministerial post, instead of some other politician capable of creating consensus.

Ruckauf stated Friday, upon his return from a visit to the United States, that he accepted the “unrefusable resignation” of his colleague Rico.

But he stressed that, despite changes in the Security ministry, he will uphold his policies related to public order, which were designed to “put criminals behind bars and keep citizens safe.”

Rico had been the star of scandals even before his designation to the Buenos Aires Security ministry post. In June 1999, he took over a hospital in the municipal district where he was mayor, saying the doctors were “bums” and that the building was his because it was located within his jurisdiction.

Asked by Ruckauf to participate in the provincial government, Rico gladly accepted the chance to climb farther up the political ladder. But he angered the governor when he threatened press photographers who pursued him, saying he would call the police to remove them. “Why do you take so many photos of me? Do you masturbate with them?” he reportedly asked the journalists.

His verbal attack of the press – coming three years after the assassination of photographer José Luis Cabezas by a group of police and a business executive’s bodyguards – obligated Ruckauf to demand Rico’s apology. Rico did so, but poorly.

His latest mistake was to assert that a photo of president De la Rúa and his police escort included a rebel officer who had taken part in one of Rico’s own uprisings in the 1980s, though in fact the man had previously been arrested and tried for a common crime.

The charge that the president had a former military rebel in his escort was soundly refuted by De la Rúa’s office, which had to publicly clarify that the person indicated was an officer in the Federal Police force who happened to look like the former military officer Rico mentioned.

Under pressure from Ruckauf, Rico wrote a letter of apology, but it turned out to be a list of complaints about the persecution he claims to be suffering. The governor called Argentina’s president to apologise, from the United States, for the former lieutenant- colonel’s gratuitous offence.

The media and political observers believed Rico would step aside, but on the contrary, he continued to demonstrate confidence that he would remain in his post. Rico stated that no one had asked for his resignation and accused the press and the ‘Alianza’ – the governing political coalition – of trying to slander him.

The supposed slander was an accusation by a former “brother-in- arms” in Rico’s rebellions and assistant in his political campaigns, Carlos Castillo, who said Rico was buying fuel for government cars at service stations owned by relatives.

Castillo also claimed that in the 1990s, then-governor of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Duhalde, the Justicialist presidential candidate in last December’s elections, spent 13 million dollars to buy the votes of Rico’s political party for his re-election.

Castillo’s charges, which were backed by other leaders who had been part of Rico’s rebel force, are under investigation by a legislative taskforce and justice officials.