ARGENTINA: Leaders During Height of Crisis Now Claim Victimhood

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 20 2003 (IPS) - Two years after the fall of Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) amidst social chaos that left 30 people dead, the former leader and his last economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, refuse to engage in self-criticism. On the contrary, they claim they were the victims of conspiracy.

The delay in support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the alleged boycott of the opposition, the lack of loyalty of the vice-president, police excesses, the voracity of the banks and even a TV programme are among the factors that De la Rúa said this week were responsible for forcing him to resign from office on Dec. 20, 2001.

Cavallo, the architect of the reviled system of banking restrictions that froze the accounts of millions of Argentine savers, on Friday blamed the continuation of the crisis on Eduardo Duhalde, who was designated by Congress to serve out De la Rúa’s presidential term.

Duhalde ordered the devaluation of the Argentine peso, ending a decade in which the national currency was maintained at one-to-one parity with the dollar, known as "convertibility", the brainchild of Cavallo himself when he served as economy minister under the Carlos Menem administration (1989-1999).

According to Cavallo, Duhalde and the provincial governors, with their "shoddy administrations" contributed to the crisis, as did De la Rúa’s first, short-lived replacement, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, He served in the presidency just five days, but in that time he announced that Argentina would default on its privately held foreign debt.

De la Rúa, voted into office by nearly half of the Argentine electorate, was the candidate of the centre-left Alianza and took office in December 1999, riding his reputation of being politically honest and austere, serious and even "boring" – quite the opposite of his predecessor Menem.

But soon the Alianza government, made up of the long-standing Radical Civic Union (UCR, De la Rúa’s party) and the Solidarity Front (FREPASO), proved a disappointment to voters. And after 18 months in office, foreign debt and poverty rates had increased, while the economic recession grew steadily worse.

At that time, when the local Equis polling firm reported that 93 percent of respondents said they were "disillusioned" with the government, vice-president Carlos Alvarez, of FREPASO, resigned from the post, citing the lack of support from the president to investigate charges of corruption and bribery in the Senate.

Journalist and lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, author of "The Palace and the Street", a book about the chaos that erupted Dec. 19 and 20, 2001, says there is no doubt that De la Rúa had isolated himself even from his own party, and that he was responsible for his own demise.

"De la Rúa was the victim of his own blindness, his own incapability, but now he is trying to deny that reality and to blame everyone else for some gigantic conspiracy against him," said Bonasso.

The Senate bribes scandal marked the beginning of the crisis that included the dramatic resignation of the president. Two years later, the allegations have returned to the forefront with the revelations of one repentant lawmaker – news that prompted De la Rúa to break the silence that he had maintained since leaving office.

The former president denied having ordered payment to senators to convince them to support the labour reforms that the IMF demanded.

The repentant lawmaker said a meeting had taken place in the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, in which De la Rúa had ordered the payout, something the former leader vehemently denies.

De la Rúa took advantage of the media spotlight this week to blame others for the end of his government.

He also alleged that UCR members might try to undercut him now through other denunciations that involve him. He criticised Alvarez for having resigned and for accusing him of being behind the Senate bribes.

About the crackdown on the protesters outside the Casa Rosada two years ago, he said that "police negligence" culminated in excesses, and denied that he had ordered them to open fire against the crowds. Six people died and hundreds were injured in that incident.

De la Rúa also has rejected criticism of his performance in office. He argues that the IMF delayed disbursement of a credit that would have prevented the financial crisis, and that the decision to limit cash withdrawals from the banks – known here as the "corralito", or little fence – cost him his own personal savings from a property sale.

The restrictions were imposed on the Argentine banks to prevent massive capital flight, which threatened the currency "convertibility" policy.

One of the least accepted of De la Rúa’s rationalisations for the demise of his government, one that he blames for his loss of credibility, is the television variety show "Videomatch", which featured an impersonator who portrayed the former president as awkward, indecisive and confused.

When he was still in office, De la Rúa tried to neutralise the impact by appearing on the show himself, but he committed several gaffs and his image only worsened.

"That is when my government began to decline," he says, and charges that the programme’s producers laid traps to make him look bad.

Also on his list of accusations was that he had been given a final push by the then-opposition Justicialista (Peronist) Party, of which Menem, Duhalde and current President Néstor Kirchner are all members.

Few doubt that some Peronist leaders in Buenos Aires province made moves to accelerate the downfall of the De la Rúa administration, but there is no evidence that such an effort alone would have been enough to cause it.

De la Rúa said he will present a list of mayors from Buenos Aires province who he claims pushed citizens to loot supermarkets and to protest at the Plaza de Mayo, where the Casa Rosada is located.

The outbreak of unrest prompted De la Rúa to declare a state of siege on Dec. 19, 2001, which only ignited further protests instead of instilling calm. "That was a mistake," he admitted Wednesday.

Two years ago, hundreds of thousands of people in Buenos Aires marched on the Plaza de Mayo, banging pots and pans as they demanded the resignations of the president and his economy minister Cavallo.

In an IPS interview, mayor Ricardo Ivoskus, of San Martín, in Buenos Aires province, recalled that on the eve of De la Rúa’s resignation, thousands of people in his district were "organised" or rounded-up to take part in the Plaza de Mayo march, though he said he had no proof of that.

The country was in chaos, "the situation was out of control" and propitious for opposition party leaders to take advantage of the crisis, said Ivoskus, who was a member of the governing UCR party. He was re-elected mayor this year, managing to survive the four years of crisis of his previous term.

San Martín is home to 500,000 people. "This was an eminently industrial district, but in the 1990s, with the liberalisation of the economy and the currency convertibility policy, hundreds of businesses and shops closed their doors," he says.

De la Rúa should have devaluated the peso when he took office, says Ivoskus. Since his successors did so, some 100 new businesses have been inaugurated each month in San Martín.

"The ones who sold off their machinery as scrap metal just want to kill themselves," he said, referring to their regret about their decisions.

The devaluation, implemented in early January 2002 by the Duhalde government, triggered an inflationary process and pushed millions into poverty and out of jobs, but it also led to a limited economic reactivation by stimulating exports and – by making imports more expensive – encouraged production for the domestic market.

This year, the economic variables made a turnaround. Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to hit seven percent, and unemployment is on its way down, though serious problems are pending, particularly widespread poverty and renegotiation of the billions in foreign debt.

Amidst this incipient recovery, the reappearance of De la Rúa and Cavallo on the political scene, looking to rewrite the history of their failed government, is considered "pathetic" by some political leaders from across the party spectrum, and by many citizens, who have made their opinions heard on talk radio shows, chastising the former president.