Another new president takes over in Argentina

By Tony Smith

Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – A populist senator became Argentina’s fifth president in two weeks today, pledging to ditch free-market policies that he said had left Argentina “without a peso.”

Eduardo Duhalde, a 60-year-old former vice president and two-term governor of the country’s richest province, Buenos Aires, donned Argentina’s blue-and-white sash of office and raised the golden scepter in an ornate ceremony in the Casa Rosada government palace.

He was chosen by Congress late Tuesday to serve out the term of his unpopular predecessor, Fernando de la Rua, through December 2003.

Today’s inauguration ceremony followed a night of protests by an indignant public, exhausted by nearly four years of recession and recent weeks of social unrest. Some Argentines were angry that Duhalde had not been chosen by a popular vote.

“Elections now!” thousands of pot-banging demonstrators chanted as they swarmed onto the capital’s streets overnight. By daytime the protests had largely ended.

Duhalde’s election was confirmed by 262 lawmakers with 21 against and 18 abstentions in a marathon session of Congress. The legislators also scuttled earlier plans for a March presidential election.

Over the coming days a flurry of announcements of cabinet positions and economic policies was expected.

Duhalde became the fifth president to take office in this economically crippled South American nation of 36 million people since Dec. 21, when de la Rua was ousted by street violence resulting from his belt-tightening policies.

Duhalde has the unenviable task of turning round the wrecked economy that is unable to pay the country’s $132 billion public debt and calming Argentina’s most serious political and economic crisis in decades.

The new president from Argentina’s largest party lashed out late Tuesday at free market policies he blames for the current economic woes.

“The financial crisis is without precedent,” he said. “We have been left today without a peso.”

“My commitment, starting from today, is to do away with an exhausted economic model … and to lay the foundations of a new model that can help our market recover and ensure a better distribution of wealth,” he said.

Industrial production has stalled. Unemployment has spiraled to near-record levels topping 18 percent, pushing thousands of Argentine families – many used to near-European living standards – into poverty.

In two tumultuous weeks, two interim presidents briefly took the helm. A more permanent caretaker president, Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, was to shepherd Argentina through to March elections but quit Sunday just a week into office, amid fresh street protests.

Although from the Peronist Party that dominates Congress, Rodriguez Saa failed to secure support from warring party factions for his plan to create 1 million jobs with a public works program and to kick-start the stalled economy with an extra currency alongside the peso and the U.S. dollar, both widely used here.

A veteran of the populist left-wing of the Peronists, Duhalde gave few clues as to concrete policies for saving Argentina from bankruptcy and staving off a slide into social chaos and anarchy.

But the tone he set was clear: The new Argentina would stand against unbound free market economics, and against kowtowing to international banking and finance.

Duhalde promised “a program of national salvation” to restore the peace, vowed to uphold his predecessor’s pledge to create 1 million new jobs and a social safety net for the unemployed.

Mindful of the enraged protests of the normally docile middle class that evicted de la Rua from office, Duhalde also pledged to protect Argentines’ savings. His unpopular predecessor had limited weekly cash withdrawals to $250 in a Dec. 1 clampdown.

Duhalde, who ran second to de la Rua in a 1999 election, has been a fierce critic of Argentina’s last decade of free-market reforms that – like elsewhere in Latin America – brought growth, but often failed to close the gap between the few rich and the legions of poor.

But Duhalde’s province, home to a third of Argentina’s 36 million people, racked up millions of dollars in debt under his administration.

Martin Redrado, chief economist of Buenos Aires think-tank Fundacion Capital, said Duhalde’s economic plan was “a leap into the unknown.”

“I think he will move Argentina toward a more protectionist economy … away from free market policies we have seen in last 10 years,” said Redrado. “We are talking about a shift.”

After nearly four years of recession, Argentina is in its worst crisis since the interruption of democracy by a 1976-83 dictatorship. The restoration of democracy sent the military back to the barracks and left Argentina’s political elites to feud for power. So far, there have been no rumblings from the military in the current crisis.

Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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