ARGENTINA: Menem Stands by Economic Model Despite Blackout

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 13 1996 (IPS) - Argentine President Carlos Menem reiterated Friday that there will be no shift in his economic policy, in response to a widespread blackout accompanied by blaring horns and banging on pots and pans, through which the population expressed its discontent.

“There is no possibility that this president will change his economic course, because there is no other way out for the country,” Menem stated, adding that if the protests are aimed at getting him to step down, “forget it, because I am the captain, not a rat that jumps ship.”

Participation in Thursday’s five-minute blackout – organised by a Multisectorial Forum made up of the three leading opposition parties, chambers of commerce, small business and farmers associations, pensioners and students – was high, but just how high is hard to gauge.

Energy Secretary Carlos Bastos said the drop in electricity consumption was 22 percent. But sources at his secretariat put the figure at 43 percent, and a telephone survey by a local TV station (Channel 9) indicated that 73 percent of Buenos Aires inhabitants joined in the protest.

The blackout was organised as a means for channeling the widespread discontent that surveys have revealed. While Menem was reelected by 50 percent of voters 16 months ago, a Gallup poll from late August indicated that only 18 percent of the population backed Menem – the lowest level in his seven years in office.

Unemployment remains high – 17.1 percent – while government initiatives to reduce the fiscal deficit basically mean tax hikes, just when economic activity has begun to recover following the blow dealt by the crisis that broke out in Mexico in late 1994.

The blackout, a protest without precedents in Argentine history, was set to begin at 20.00 local time (23.00 GMT). But the honking, banging and shouting began a few minutes early, and was heard in poor and well-heeled sectors of town alike, as well as in Argentina’s other big cities, especially Rosario, Mendoza and Cordoba.

A small group from the governing Justice Party called a last minute “lights-on” to counteract the effect of the blackout, using laser rays, searchlights and fireworks.

“The blackout did not change the generalised bad mood. It only gave it a channel through which to express itself – and that expression was powerful,” commentator Julio Blanck wrote in Buenos Aires’ leading daily, ‘Clarin’.

Analyst Alberto Valdez argued, meanwhile, that the success of the measure should not be attributed to the parties opposed to the government, because “people joined in to express their rage, and the opposition was capable of channeling that discontent, providing a diagnosis, but without concrete proposals.”

The political sectors that organised the blackout say their intention was just that – to offer the population a channel for expressing their anxiety and concern. But they added that they were confident the protest would help lead towards a change in economic policy, in spite of Menem’s reiterated refusals.

“Not even the most iron-fisted dictatorships can ignore a widespread expression of popular will. There is no way to govern without the majority,” Rodolfo Terragno, president of the Radical Civic Union, Argentina’s leading opposition party, said Friday.

The government lacks “a social base,” Terragno charged. “The micro-climate of power, flattery, removal from reality are phenomena that tend to afflict leaders, making them stubborn.”

The leader of the centre-left Solidarity Front, Carlos Alvarez, said the parties that joined together to organise the blackout will compete in the 1997 legislative elections. But he pointed to the need for an alliance for the 1999 presidential ballot.

“I am convinced that a new political and social majority must be formed in Argentina, with not only the Radicals and the Front, but also with those who abandon” the ruling party, he stated.

Alvarez said the Multisectorial Forum will present proposals with respect to the chief issues worrying the population, such as high unemployment, but not an alternative government programme, because the group is not an electoral coalition.