ARGENTINA: 20 Years On, Democracy Strong But Challenges Abound

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 11 2003 (IPS) - ”I’m proud to live in a country which is celebrating 20 years of uninterrupted democracy. And I don’t think there’s a risk anymore that the military will take over again,” schoolteacher Nélida Colombo told IPS.

”But don’t believe I’m satisfied with what we have. We have a lot of maturing to do,” she added.

Wednesday marked the 20th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy after the last military dictatorship, and a large majority of Argentines welcome the anniversary as a mark of permanence. However, the milestone has found a country suffering a number of woes, and facing a long list of pending challenges.

The reference to two decades of continuous democracy is meaningful in a country that spent a good part of the 20th century governed by de facto military regimes.

Since Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) received the presidential sash from the hands of the last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, the country has experienced three military uprisings, as well as the trial, conviction, imprisonment and pardon of the former members of the 1976-1983 military regime’s ruling junta.

There have also been two major bomb attacks on Israeli-Jewish targets that left a combined death toll of over 100, innumerable corruption scandals, and a plunge in the reputation and prestige of the country’s political leaders.

Alfonsín stepped down several months before the end of his term to escape an economic crisis that had gotten out of hand. His successor Carlos Menem (1989-1999) pushed through a controversial constitutional reform that paved the way for his re-election.

And Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) was forced by rioting and protests against his economic policies to resign halfway through his term, which led to a series of interim governments that culminated in the presidential elections in which President Néstor Kirchner was elected last May.

In the past 20 years, democracy has survived a number of political shake-ups in this Southern Cone country of 37 million, as well as severe economic troubles and social unrest.

That has included two periods of hyperinflation, the controversial privatisation of most of the country’s state-owned enterprises, the ballooning of the foreign debt which ended in default, and unemployment and poverty that have soared to unprecedented levels in this once-rich nation.

In just a few years, the poverty rate climbed from 30 percent to more than 50 percent of the population.

Unemployment, which stood at six percent when Alfonsín took office, has skyrocketed to the current 16.4 percent, after hitting a high of 20 percent. And the foreign debt of 50 billion dollars has grown threefold.

Despite the serious problems that have led to the decline in the country’s economic and social indicators, 79 percent of those interviewed in a survey carried out this month by the Centre of Studies on Public Opinion (CEOP) said they ”highly value” democracy.

In Argentina, it is not easy to find anyone who defends the last dictatorship, which committed gross human rights violations, including the forced disappearance of between 10,000 and 30,000 real or suspected opponents.

The horrors of that recent past have been kept alive in the public memory by the continuing work of local human rights organisations.

Sociologist Ernesto López, director of the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Quilmes, told IPS that democracy itself is not questioned either in Argentina or in the rest of the region. What is being seen, on the other hand, is a ”functional weakening” of the system, he said.

”I don’t see any crisis in terms of support for democracy, but I do see a crisis in the functioning of the system, which too often fails to provide an adequate response to demands for economic growth and social inclusion, and which renders political leaders powerless,” said López.

That phenomenon has been repeatedly observed in other South American countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru or Venezuela, which have faced severe instability, but have had the capacity to overcome major difficulties like the collapse of governments thanks to the rules of democracy, said the analyst.

For example, after a long, heated campaign to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, which included an aborted two-day coup d’etat and a two-month general strike, the opposition in that country is now seeking to remove him through a constitutional mechanism, by collecting signatures to hold a recall referendum.

And in Bolivia, massive opposition to the government’s energy policy led in October to the resignation of then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who was succeeded in an orderly fashion by his vice-president.

Grassroots frustration over problems like poverty or the lack of jobs thus takes aim against political leaders who are seen as ineffective or corrupt, rather than focusing on the democratic system itself.

The respondents to the CEOP survey who put such a high value on democracy also said Argentina was ”worse off” or ”much worse off” than 20 years ago with respect to the economy, education, health, corruption and the administration of justice.

Civil society groups that have worked for the past two decades on raising public awareness on political rights and civic participation complain that Argentines participate very little in influencing government policies and actions.

In the CEOP survey, 87 percent of the respondents said ”I vote,” when asked how they participate in the democratic system.

However, only 10 percent said they felt ”totally represented” by the candidates they voted for, while 88 percent said they felt only ”slightly” represented, or ”not at all.”

”People show very little interest in participating, because democracy accumulates many social debts,” argued Gonzalo Arguello, coordinator of the ”Political Reforms Now!” campaign, which is pressing Congress to discuss the creation of mechanisms that would boost public input and make politics more transparent.

One of the proposals set forth by civil society organisations is a constitutional reform that would make it possible to hold referendums allowing the public to vote down specific laws towards which there is widespread popular opposition.

In a conversation with IPS, Arguello said that many citizens wonder why they should participate in public affairs if the results of their initiatives end up shelved in Congress or their efforts run into a dead-end in biased verdicts handed down by a justice system that inspires little or no confidence, according to the CEOP survey.

”Pure representative democracy has its limitations,” Arguello acknowledged.

”The organisations that work for political rights would like the system to offer a greater number of tools for public input and participation,” he said. ”But it is not only a question of having the mechanisms in place. Also required are people who want to use them, and a more active state”.