Menem promises more of the same

<a href=www.thescotsman.co.uk>thescotsman.co.uk REED LINDSAY IN BUENOS AIRES

WHEN Argentina erupted in spontaneous protests and political upheaval 16 months ago, there was impassioned talk of revolution as public opinion veered sharply to the left.

Yet the country’s political elite held firm and when Argentines vote for their next president tomorrow, they will be faced with an uninspiring field of aspirants, led by right-wing former president Carlos Saúl Menem.

Ironically, Mr Menem and his main rival, Ricardo López Murphy, a graduate of the University of Chicago, have promised to carry on with the kind of free-market policies that many blame for bringing the country to its knees.

The polls are saying the election will be one of the closest in decades, with most giving Mr Menem a narrow lead but all saying that a second round run-off will be required.

In the dying days of campaigning, rival candidates have attacked Mr Menem. Nestor Kirchner, the government’s candidate, blamed the former president’s 1989-1999 rule for the country’s devastating economic, social and political crisis.

But Mr Menem’s confidence is undimmed. When he appeared before a huge crowd at River Plate’s football stadium in Buenos Aires late on Thursday night, with his 37-year-old ex-beauty queen wife, Cecilia Bolocco, he blamed his successors for the country’s turmoil.

"I am returning. I am returning to rebuild the Argentine republic. I am returning to end hunger, to end poverty and chaos," said Mr Menem. He even invited the people to join him on 25 May at the Government House for the inauguration.

Yet the politicking cannot disguise widespread apathy and cynicism about the election. Indeed, the nation’s burgeoning social movements are boycotting it all together.

"We don’t think any change will take place through this election," said federal deputy Luis Zamora, a straight-shooting former Trotskyite who refused to run for president despite being near the top of popularity polls early last year. "Even if we won the election we wouldn’t be able to pass any laws because congress and the supreme court are the same. We would be fooling the population and legitimating the main parties, which only decided to convoke the election to stay in power."

After the resignation of the former president Fernando de la Rúa in December 2001, middle class Buenos Aires residents formed neighbourhood assemblies in parks and on street corners to co-ordinate pot-banging demonstrations and to discuss everything from the need to fix crumbling pavements to the illegitimacy of the external debt.

Workers seized control of more than 100 bankrupt factories nationwide, reinitiating production under self-management and establishing egalitarian salaries.

But unlike in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, where surging social movements have helped sweep left-leaning candidates into office in recent years, no electorally viable political force has taken shape.

"I don’t feel represented by any political party," said Luis, 45, a member of a Buenos Aires neighbourhood assembly, as he held one end of a banner at a protest last week that read "QSVT", which stands for "They All Must Go".

The banner is part of an anti-election campaign organised by the assemblies, which have printed and distributed substitute ballots marked with QSVT. Many Argentines say they are planning on spoiling their ballots or not voting at all. But pollsters say abstentions will be small in comparison with the congressional elections of 2001, when some 40 per cent of Argentines did not vote for any candidate, dubbed voto bronca, or "angry vote".

"The electorate feels that voto bronca isn’t a solution because it ends up benefiting the very candidates it seeks to punish," said Santiago Lacase, an analyst with Buenos Aires-based polling firm Ipsos-Mora y Araujo.

"The only way they get people to vote is by instilling fear about the other candidates, not by talking about their proposals," said Mr Zamora. "A lot of people are voting out of fear that Menem will win. There’s the feeling that if he wins, and you didn’t vote, you’re somehow responsible."