POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Vice-President’s Resignation Sparks Commotion

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 7 2000 (IPS) - Argentine Vice-President Carlos “Chacho” Alvarez triggered a political commotion Friday when he handed in his resignation in a forceful statement of his indignation over the recent Senate vote-buying scandal.

Alvarez said he remained loyal to President Fernando de la Rúa and the voters who put him in office, and added that he would continue working in the Alliance, the coalition governing the country since December, which is comprised of his left-leaning party, the Front for a Country with Solidarity (FREPASO), and De la Rúa’s Radical Civic Union (UCR).

But despite his declaration, the vice-president’s resignation will weaken the ruling coalition, which has lost one its chief protagonists.

De la Rúa was dismayed by the news, according to one of his spokesmen. The president was unsuccessful in his attempt to convince Alvarez to withdraw his resignation.

The vice-president’s decision came shortly after a cabinet shuffle in which De la Rúa sacked several ministers, but not two high-ranking officials tainted by the Senate corruption scandal: Antonio Flamarique, who was serving as Labour Minister when the bribery scandal surfaced two months ago, and the director of the Secretariat of Intelligence, Fernando de Santibañes.

Flamarique was named Secretary-General to the President Thursday, and De Santibañes was confirmed in his post.

But on Friday, while the entire country was awaiting the vice- president’s formal announcement that he was stepping down, Flamarique and De Santibañes resigned.

Alvarez said the way of doing politics in Argentina was suffering a “terminal crisis,” and added that “I could not just passively or silently accompany decisions that ran counter to what I was demanding in the Senate” — the resignation of the lawmakers suspected of involvement in the bribe-taking scandal.

“I am resigning in order to be able to freely say what I feel and think without harming the president or altering the institutional order,” said a visibly moved Alvarez. He also stated that he was not motivated by an aim to weaken the figure of the president, in which he said he knew society had placed its hopes.

The vice-president’s resignation is the gravest political development that the Alliance has faced since its creation in 1997.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Alvarez’s home to express their support, and many of them lamented that the government was losing its only honest politician.

Alvarez stressed that his party, FREPASO, was founded “to drastically change the way of doing politics.” He added that today, Argentina was witnessing a “terminal crisis in the way of doing politics, in the ties between the economic and political powers, and in the link between politics and the people.

“It seems paradoxical, but the more poverty, unemployment, scepticism and apathy grow, the stronger the response from some sectors using dirty money and buying and selling laws, and the greater the protagonism of those who operate in politics as if it were a business,” he told his supporters.

Alvarez was alluding to the crisis that broke out over two months ago in the Senate — over which he himself presided — when legislators of the Alliance and the leading opposition force, the Justice (Peronist) Party, were accused of receiving pay-offs from a sector of the government in exchange for their votes in favour of labour reforms that were approved in the face of widespread popular resistance.

The allegations of bribe-taking are the object of an ongoing investigation by the federal justice system.

Alvarez and his close associates began to observe that with respect to certain decisions by De la Rúa, the vice-president often took positions more characteristic of an opposition force, while the Justice Party ended up defending the president’s more moderate decisions.

In fact, De la Rúa met with former president Carlos Menem (1989- 99), the leader of the Justice Party, two weeks ago.

“In the face of this crisis, it is not enough to invoke a justice system in which many of those who are supposed to investigate would not pass an investigation into their own wealth,” said Alvarez — an allusion to Judge Jorge Liporaci, who is conducting the probe into the vote-buying scandal, and who himself has been accused of illicit enrichment.

“What are needed are strong, bold gestures,” said Alvarez. “I asked senators who played a leading role in the moral crisis shaking that institution in recent years to resign, and they only screwed themselves more tightly to their seats.” He added that he hoped his resignation would help them to “make the decision expected of them.”

The resignations handed in Friday bring to seven the total number of officials dismissed or stepping down from their posts in the space of 36 hours. Political analyst Rosendo Fraga noted that “De la Rúa wanted to show that he had the power, but he did not count on Alvarez’s reaction,” not to mention the strong support the vice-president would receive from the public.

“The government has been weakened, because even though everyone insists that the Alliance will stay united in the cabinet — where ministers from Alvarez’s party remain — and in Congress, it has been politically shattered,” according to Fraga.

“In addition, De la Rúa had to part with two people he had confirmed just the day before,” he added.