Posted on 12/31/2001 11:14:42 PM PST by Pokey78
Eduardo Duhalde, a Peronist senator, is expected to be elected Argentina's latest interim president on Tuesday, to become the country's fifth head of state in only two weeks.
Mr Duhalde was favoured to be named the post by a session of Congress due to begin on Tuesday afternoon.
Congress on Monday agreed to postpone presidential elections due in March after the resignation on Sunday night of two leading politicians, including interim president Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, had plunged the country deeper into political and economic crisis.
Mr Rodríguez Saá said he did not have the full backing of his own Peronist party to remain in the job.
Immediately afterwards, Ramon Puerta, the Peronist head of the senate and next in line for the job, also quit, citing ill health. Mr Puerta had already served as the country's interim president for 48 hours last week.
The leader of Argentina's lower House, Eduardo Camano, was then named as interim president. He will hold the office until the Congress meets on Tuesday to elect a new president who will serve until the next scheduled elections, now due in 2003.
The Peronist party, which took over after the resignation 10 days ago of Fernando de la Rúa, has been torn apart by internal bickering over who should run the country.
"This attitude does not give me any other choice but to resign," Mr Rodríguez Saá said on a nationally-televised address from his home province of San Luis.
In a pointed attack on José Manuel de la Sota, the governor of Cordoba province, Mr Rodríguez Saá said the presidential hopeful had put his own ambitions ahead of the good of the country.
Earlier on Sunday, Mr Rodríguez Saá had held meetings with Peronist provincial governors in an effort to pick a new cabinet that would enjoy wider support.
One week ago, Mr Rodríguez Saá defaulted on the country’s $155bn in public debt and announced the creation of a "third currency" – the argentino – that was to have been launched in two weeks and circulated alongside the peso and the US dollar.
That plan now appears to be dead, with rival Peronist leaders in open disagreement over which policies to adopt to deal with the deepening economic crisis.
On Saturday, Mr Rodríguez Saá had spoken to President George W. Bush, who reiterated the US commitment to provide technical assistance through the International Monetary Fund.
But the previous day David Exposito, president of the state-owned Banco de la Nacion and one of the main proponents of Mr Rodríguez Saá's economic plan, had resigned after comments he made on the new currency sparked an outcry.
Mr Exposito had said the government could print up to $15bn of the new currency without triggering inflation. The estimate - far higher than those of private sector economists - fuelled fears the government was set to begin financing public spending by printing money.
The latest events came as an estimated 15,000 people, mainly from middle class neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, took to the streets in a mass protest against some appointments in the new government, sparking the resignation of the entire cabinet.
The protests were triggered by a supreme court decision to uphold bank controls, which have limited people to withdrawing $1,000 a month from their accounts.
Some 12 policemen were injured as the protests turned violent. Nationwide rioting and looting had also toppled the government of Mr De la Rúa little over a week ago, and thirty-two people have been killed and more than a thousand injured in two weeks of violence.
Under a controversial decision by the Peronist-dominated congress, Argentina is due to hold fresh elections on March 3 to choose a president to serve out the remaining two years of Mr De la Rúa's term.
However, that decision has been challenged in the courts as unconstitutional and rival Peronist leaders are divided over whether to proceed with that plan.
With that, I also have a campaign slogan. Can somebody translate that into Spanish, please?
I left that morass in 1962 and never looked back.
The Peronists under Juan Peron is who started the mess in the first place.
The real reason for the collapse of Argentina has been it's socialized welfare system introduced by the Peronists in the late 1940's. Peron used the vast reserves that Argentina acquired during WWII by selling foodstuffs to establish a welfare state and buy out the support of the working class "Los descamisados" (the shirtless ones). He squandered it by buying out the foreign owned assets, such as the then British owned railway system which was in disrepair. Instead of attracting foreign investment and opening up the economy he nationalized industry. By the time of his overthrow in 1955 the country was bankrupt.
No goverment military or democratic has had the balls to tear down the welfare state. Instead they borrowed from the international markets to make up the budget shortfall to maintain a welfare state they could not afford. The country maintained a lifestyle without having the funds to pay for it. Instead of investing capital in productive activities they squandered it on the welfare system. Now they have to pay the piper and all the people who have been sucking at the tit are now having to realized the tit has dried up.
Argentina will never amount to anything unless it gets rid of the productive people paying for the unproductive. The real shame is the country is an immensily rich country in natural resources saddled by a population that is brain dead. But it will never change as generations of Argentines have been brainwashed into believeing they are a second world country, when in reality they don't even belong in the thirld world.
There is no alternative politically because the choice is between the left (The Peronists) and the farther left (The Radical Civic Union and Frepaso) . There exists nothing tantamount to any legitimate conservative laisez Faire parties
Look carefully at Argentina because that is where the welfare state eventually leads.
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