ARGENTINA: Duhalde Beset by Protesters, Oil Companies

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 21 2002 (IPS) - Public employees, the jobless, teachers, doctors, pensioners, account-holders and students in Argentina held massive street protests again Wednesday, while the government continued to work hard to minimise the impact of the falling peso and rising fuel prices on its economic emergency plan.

President Eduardo Duhalde admitted that all of the sectors that took to the streets had valid reasons to protest, because the country has fallen into a full-fledged economic depression.

“There are a lot of problems, and the solutions are arriving by the droplet,” said Duhalde. But he urged the protesters to express their grievances without violence, because “a country can’t live without a minimal level of order.”

The president also warned that he would not permit a run on the dollar – in the past 50 days, the value of the peso has plunged from parity to 2.2 against the dollar – and ordered the Central Bank to intervene on the free market to keep the peso between 1.6 and 1.7 against the dollar.

Meanwhile, the oil companies, which are opposed to a 20 percent tax on their exports, began this week to raise prices, with a five percent hike in many service stations – an issue the president avoided referring to in his statements.

Duhalde said Wednesday that the privatised Repsol-YPF oil company would not raise its prices. However, the president of the company, Alfonso Cortina, said the rise in the international prices of crude would drive up fuel prices.

Cortina said his remarks were not a reaction to the new tax on oil exports, which is opposed by the companies as well as their employees. The price of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reference basket climbed last week from 18.31 to 19.41 dollars a barrel.

In the meantime, the protests continued to rage on the streets of Buenos Aires, and in at least 10 of the 23 provinces of this crisis- stricken Southern Cone country.

Exactly two months after protests and supermarket looting led to the resignation of president Fernando de la Rúa on Dec 20 and left a death toll of 30, a coalition of social organisations, the ‘Bloque Piquetero Nacional’, blocked several highways and avenues, before converging on the Plaza de Mayo in downtown Buenos Aires.

Retired and jobless protesters belonging to the Bloque also gathered outside the central offices of Repsol-YPF, demanding “50,000 real jobs,” and “urgent” food aid.

Members of the “unemployed movement,” made up of the left- leaning ‘Corriente Clasista y Combativa’ (Classist and Combative Current), and the ‘Federación de Tierra y Vivienda’ (Land and Housing Federation), gathered alongside workers belonging to the ‘Congreso de Trabajadores Argentinos’ central trade union outside Congress, which they wrapped in a 400- metre-long Argentine flag.

The leader of the Corriente, Juan Carlos Alderete, reported that in his latest meeting with Duhalde he recommended that the government make a “break” with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

On top of the recent free flotation of the peso, the multilateral lender is now demanding passage of budget cuts, to be debated this week by Congress, and a reduction in the funds allotted to the provinces.

Duhalde warned the governors Wednesday that if the funds transferred from the central government to the provinces were not slashed, there would be no assistance from the IMF. The governors responded that Buenos Aires must take a firmer stance in its negotiations with the multilateral lending institution.

Wednesday’s demonstrators outside of Congress complained that the proposed IMF-approved government budget would mean new cuts in public sector wages and pensions, and in spending on health and education.

The secretary-general of the teachers’ union, Marta Maffei, stated during the protest that the growth of poverty in this country – Latin America’s third largest economy, where an estimated 40 percent of the population of 36 million is now poor – was almost inconceivable.

Many teachers are still waiting for the payment of several months’ worth of back wages, not to mention raises that were promised but never implemented, and Maffei warned that the coming school year, which begins in March, is in danger.

“Every day, another 1,700 workers are left without a job, and enter the circuit of poverty. And those of us who do not lose our jobs have to put up with salary cuts, unpaid wages, and restructuring in the midst of an inflationary process,” said Maffei.

Metalworkers also called a nationwide demonstration for Mar 5, to protest the roughly 1,000 dismissals that could take place next month in car-markers in the central province of Cordoba.

In one of the demonstrations, held on the Avenida 9 de Julio in the capital, most of the protesters were women and children who run or depend on soup kitchens in the southern part of the city. “We feed HIV- positive children and women with syphilis and tuberculosis, and we just don’t have enough food for everyone,” said one woman.

Doctors and nurses from 76 public hospitals in the province of Buenos Aires warned that within the next two weeks, the hospitals would run out of food for their patients, due to the several months’ debt that the provincial government owes their suppliers.

Besides the protests staged by social organisations and trade unions, account-holders continued to gather outside banks in downtown Buenos Aires to bang on pots and pans and wave placards Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, the Central Bank eased the “corralito” – the restrictions on bank withdrawals – by authorising banks to issue certificates of deposit which can be used to purchase real estate and new cars, and to pay off loans.

“Thieves!”, “Give us back our savings!”, and “I deposited dollars, I want dollars!” read some of the placards waved outside the banks, many of which have been closed off from the public by thick metal panels.

The partial freeze on bank accounts was imposed by the government of de la Rúa on Dec 3 to prevent a collapse of the financial system. Since then, thousands of middle-class savers have regularly taken to the streets to loudly demand their money back.

Account-holders stepped up their protests in January, when the government scrapped the currency board that kept the peso at par with the dollar for 11 years. Savers were to convert their dollar-denominated deposits to pesos, but at 1.4 pesos to the dollar, not at the current free market rate of 2.15.

A one-kilometre-long line of lawyers and savings account- holders queued up outside one court to file lawsuits to try to get their money back, despite a government decree that blocked, for six months, all litigation against the state targetting the “corralito.”

“I’ve been a lawyer for 40 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said one attorney.

On Wednesday morning, radio talk show hosts recommended that their listeners stay home to avoid the hassles caused by the demonstrations. But many people called in to complain that they were in effect urging people not to come out and protest.

Buenos Aires residents, who for the past two months have been organising in massive grassroots neighbourhood assemblies, decided to join the demonstrations of the jobless and trade union members Wednesday night by banging on pots and pans.