POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Citizens Take to Streets to Protest Corruption

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 2 2001 (IPS) - Citizens took to the streets Friday to protest the lack of progress in legal proceedings involving a vote- buying scandal in the Argentine Senate, which could end up being dismissed despite the efforts of the public prosecutor’s office to bring the suspects to justice.

“It can’t be that we are living in a country where laws are bought and where judges guarantee the impunity of the corrupt,” said Luis Moreno Ocampo, president of the local non-governmental organisation (NGO) Citizen Power, the Argentine chapter of Transparency International, the world’s leading anti-corruption watchdog.

In his speech to the demonstrators, the activist was alluding to the vote-buying scandal unleashed in the first half of last year when reporters and senators alleged that members of the upper house of Congress had received millions of dollars in bribes to pass a broad reform of the labour code introduced by the government of Fernando de la Rúa.

Friday’s demonstration was the first held to protest this specific case of corruption, which threatens to peter out into nothing amidst the legal maneuvering.

The protest was backed by prominent intellectuals, artists and public figures, as well as other citizen rights and human rights groups.

The office of the public prosecutor stated Thursday that the case involved “a meticulous criminal enterprise, perfectly orchestrated by certain sectors of the National Executive Power and the Honourable Chamber of Senators of the Nation.” It also named the head of the ruling coalition senators, José Genoud, as one of the architects of the vote-buying scheme.

Moreno Ocampo sounded the alert at a demonstration called by Citizen Power outside the courthouse. The demonstrators wrapped a 400-metre Argentine flag around the building, sung the national anthem, and called on society to join forces against corrupt leaders.

The protest came the day after the public prosecutor’s office requested the prosecution of seven of the 11 senators implicated in the vote-buying scandal. Their request is now pending a ruling from the Buenos Aires Federal Court.

Federal Judge Carlos Liporaci, who is under investigation by the Magistrate’s Council for illicit personal enrichment, the body in charge of oversight of judges and prosecutors, ruled last December that the case could neither proceed nor be dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Liporaci’s ruling caused indignation among those who had denounced the bribes, particularly former vice-president Carlos Alvarez, who ended up resigning from his post in protest against the manner in which the government was handling the corruption scandal.

Shortly before handing down his ruling, the judge had stated that there was conclusive evidence that vote-buying had indeed taken place.

Based on the results of the investigation so far, federal prosecutors Eduardo Freiler and Federico Delgado said Thursday that the illegal commisions existed, that they were paid out of two cheques issued by the State Secretariat of Intelligence (SIDE), and that at least seven senators were involved.

The prosecutors maintained that former Labour Minister Alberto Flamarique and then-director of SIDE Fernando de Santibañes had “reached an agreement” with the leaders of the ruling coalition and opposition benches in the Senate, who in turn distributed the illegal funds among several members of the upper house of Congress.

Flamarique and De Santibañes were the main targets of then-vice- president Alvarez – the representative of the centre-left Frepaso, the junior partner to De la Rúa’s Radical Civic Union party in the governing Alliance – who said he would only remain in his post if they both handed in their resignations.

But when they not only failed to resign, but the president publicly confirmed them in their posts, Alvarez stepped down, unleashing a political crisis that in the end led to the downfall of Flamarique and De Santibañes.

Freiler and Delgado said the bribes were paid with checks for a total of 6.5 million dollars cashed in the state-owned Banco Nacion by two SIDE employees, “coincidentally” – the prosecutors said – on the very day approval of the controversial labour reforms was being negotiated in Congress.

Interior Minister Federico Storani said Friday that the prosecutors’ request was “not very responsible” and “very politicised” – statements that were protested by judges, political leaders and other public figures who took part in Friday’s demonstration.

Presidential spokesman Ricardo Ostuni clarified, however, that the government was not opposed to the request for the case to be appealed to the Buenos Aires Federal Court, but that it took issue with the prosecutors’ complaint of a supposed lack of collaboration by authorities.

The prosecutors had complained that “pompous declarations to the press are not in keeping with the commitment to and involvement in the case of certain sectors of the state.” They also identified two senior government officials and the ruling coalition’s Senate leader as heavily implicated in the scandal.

Moreno Ocampo said the specific circumstances provided a good opportunity to begin to select the best candidates from each party, before voters, for the first time ever, directly elect their senators in October, in a shift from the traditional vote in provincial legislatures.

The activist said the Senate scandal highlighted two underlying problems: the widespread lack of respect for the law, and the fact that the institutions are not at the service of the citizens, but of minorities with the power to corrupt.

“The political parties reacted to this case with a corporate defence, instead of putting their loyalty to voters first, which means they are more concerned about covering up certain crimes than about purging politics of corrupt leaders,” he charged.

Moreno Ocampo stressed that the sense of public outrage over the Senate bribe-taking case, the high salaries earned by legislators in a country where over a third of the population is poor, and their questioned performance was “not aimed at the system of political parties, but against those leaders who are corrupt.”

Citizen Power proposed Friday that the generalised sense of outrage be transformed into a common effort to confront, in a coordinated manner, the minority of corrupt politicians who have been successful up to now in defending their corporate interests.