Carlos Menem

Carlos Menem as President of Argentina (1995)

Carlos Saúl Menem Akil or Carlos Menem for short (born July 2, 1930 in Anillaco , La Rioja province , † February 14, 2021 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine lawyer and politician . As a member of the Partido Justicialista (Peronists), he was President of Argentina from July 9, 1989 to December 10, 1999 .

Life

Early years

Carlos Menem's family was at the beginning of the 20th century from the then still the Ottoman Empire belonging to Syria came to Argentina. Menem was baptized a Catholic. He studied law at the State University of Cordoba . He led a campaign to support political prisoners and was imprisoned in 1957 for assisting in violent actions against the dictatorship of General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu . After the end of the military dictatorship in 1973, he was elected governor of the La Rioja province. He was arrested again three years later when President Isabel Martínez de Perón was overthrown in March 1976 and a military junta took over the presidency again . In October 1983, with the end of the military regime and the country's return to democracy , Menem was re-elected governor of La Rioja province. On May 14, 1989, when the country was suffering from a serious economic crisis, he was elected President of the Republic of Argentina to succeed Raúl Alfonsín .

Presidency

The main problem Menem faced was the economy, which was on the brink of ruin due to hyperinflation and recession. Menem acted swiftly by implementing a series of neoliberal reforms in agreement with the IMF . He very often made use of the emergency decree. So he privatized the state companies and the state television stations. He deregulated the economy and released prices. During the tenure of the Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo , the Convertibility was enacted that the value of the Argentine peso 1: 1 to the dollar of the United States coupled. This exchange rate lasted until the Argentine financial crisis of 2001/2002. The central bank was obliged to cover the Argentine currency with its dollar reserves at a ratio of 1: 1. As a result, the state could no longer refinance itself by increasing the money supply (lack of seigniorage ). This positive aspect was undone by an increase in external debt: In the 10 years of his reign, external debt grew by 123% from 65.3 to 146.2 billion US dollars.

The main economic benefit derived from these measures was comparatively low single-digit inflation. The fixed parity of the Argentine peso with the dollar, as well as the relatively high interest rates caused by the high financial requirements, attracted foreign capital, which led to significant growth in gross domestic product . The privatization in the public sector and state-owned companies led to quality improvements in several sectors (water, electricity, gas), although many consumers were excluded from this and the quality of services worsened in other sectors. The privatization of the rail network failed completely, and large parts of the large route network were completely abandoned.

At the same time, due to the high domestic prices "tied" to the dollar, the most significant disadvantages of his policy were a significant decrease in the competitiveness of the export economy and the processing companies that supplied the domestic market, as well as unemployment.

When Menem took over the government, unemployment and underemployment reached historic heights (8.1% and 8.6% of the economically active population, respectively). After a period of slow decline (6.9% and 8.3% respectively in May 1992), unemployment and underemployment rose again during the economic crisis in Mexico (" Tequila Crisis "), until it reached 18.4% and 18.4% respectively in May 1995 11.3% peaked and afterwards the two indicators fell to 12.4 and 13.6% respectively in October 1998. At the end of his reign these numbers were 13.8 and 14.3%, respectively.

Menem also made a name for itself in other areas. In 1991 he was involved in the formation of the South American free trade zone Mercosur . After the scandal caused by the murder of the recruit Omar Carrasco, he abolished conscription . His government was finally corruption -vorwürfe and proven cases of nepotism loaded. He pardoned soldiers and officers of the previous military dictatorship (1976-1983) such as the torturer Antonio Domingo Bussi as well as members of guerrilla organizations who had been mainly active in the 1970s.

He is charged with manipulating the judiciary . When he was in power, a law of Congress increased the number of members of the Supreme Court to nine. Part of the press called this enlarged court “the court of miracles” because it was accused of always making decisions based on the interests of the government. Another name given to the five judges close to Menem was "the automatic majority," as in most disputes the votes of these five judges were the same.

During his reign, terrorist attacks were carried out that killed over a hundred people: the attack on the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the attack on the Argentine-Israeli Association ( AMIA ) in 1994 . The investigation, which should find the culprits of these attacks, was unsuccessful; some sectors maintain that the investigation was deliberately obstructed by government agencies.

Menem (left) handing over office to his successor Fernando de la Rúa (1999)

The high popularity of his leadership and the great power concentrated in the Partido Justicialista allowed Menem to put pressure on the opposition party Radical Citizens' Union (UCR) and especially on its party leader Raúl Alfonsín to sign the so-called Pact of Olivos . In it, after negotiations behind closed doors, the two sides agreed, among other things, to call for a reform of the national constitution in 1994, which in exchange for a shortening of the presidency from six to four years enabled the president to be re-elected once . This made Menem's re-election possible the following year.

In his second term, Menem stuck to the economic policy of his first term. However, this time the growing foreign debt, the beginning of a recession in the fourth quarter of 1998 and new corruption allegations made Menem an increasingly unpopular figure. Although he wanted to run again in the presidential elections, since in his opinion the constitutional amendment meant that his second presidency was to be regarded as the first presidency in the sense of the new constitution, but failed in court. After the presidential elections Menem handed over his office in 1999 to Fernando de la Rúa of the opposition Radical Citizens Union (UCR), who was able to prevail against the candidate of the Partido Justicialista (PJ) Eduardo Duhalde .

On June 17, 1999, he received an award from Pope John Paul II for his tough stance against abortion during the election campaign (March 25 had been declared the “day of unborn life”). Afterwards, his ex-wife had publicly testified that she had aborted Menem with support.

Life After the Presidency

Carlos Menem in the Argentine Senate (2018)

In May 2001 he married the Chilean Cecilia Bolocco , who previously worked as a model ( Miss Universum 1987) and as a Chilean television presenter, this marriage was divorced in April 2007. He was arrested on June 7, 2001 on suspicion of arms trafficking with Croatia and Ecuador during his tenure (1991 and 1996) and was under house arrest until November of the same year . At the end of August 2002 he was on trial and denied all charges. He was later charged with having accounts in Swiss banks, the existence of which the ex-president had not disclosed and the existence of which he could not justify. He was convicted of the matter, but on December 20, 2004, after being given bail, he was released from prison.

After President Eduardo Duhalde had announced presidential elections for 2003, Menem ran again, which took place on April 27th. Menem initially achieved a simple majority with 25% of the votes. However, he did not succeed in gaining the necessary votes for an absolute majority and winning the presidency directly. A runoff election between Menem and the runner-up Néstor Kirchner was therefore scheduled for May 18, 2003 . However, Menem decided not to run for the runoff when the polls showed that his opponent would outperform him by about 40 percentage points. When Menem resigned, Néstor Kirchner automatically became President of Argentina.

On October 23, 2005, Menem ran for his home province of La Rioja in the Senate elections and won the seat of the runner-up. The winner of the election was Ángel Maza , governor of the province and ally of President Kirchner, who in turn was a decided opponent of Menem. However, because of the electoral system, Carlos Menem became a senator. (The strongest party receives two posts, the second strongest group one.) Thus, exactly six years after the end of his presidency, Menem took over a public office again. However, some political analysts see the fact that he did not achieve a majority in his own province as a sign of his political loss of importance.

On June 13, 2013, an Argentine federal court retried the 2002 trial sentenced Carlos Menem to seven years in prison for illegal arms deliveries to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995. But Menem did not have to serve the prison sentence, as he enjoyed immunity as a member of the Senate . He died in February 2021 at the age of 90.

literature

• Peter Birle, Sandra Carreras (ed.): Argentina after ten years of menem. Change and Continuity . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-89354-586-7
• Eva Karnowsky: Carlos Saúl Menem . In: Nikolaus Werz (ed.): Populists, revolutionaries, statesmen. Politicians in Latin America . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 978-3-86527-513-4 , pp. 492-516.
• Mariana Llanos, Detlef Nolte: Menem throws in the towel. A new political beginning in Argentina under Néstor Kirchner? in: Brennpunkt Latin America 10/2003, Institute for Ibero America customer: Hamburg, ISSN  1437-6148 ( full text as PDF )
• PW Zagorski (1994): Civil-military relations and Argentine democracy: the armed forces under the Menem government. Armed Forces & Society, 20 (3), 423-437.

Web links

Commons : Carlos Menem  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Carlos Menem in the nndb (English)
• Literature by and about Carlos Menem in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Argentina - Ex-President Carlos Menem died at the age of 90. Accessed February 14, 2021 (German). 
2. ↑ Darío Silva D'Andrea: Tragedia, política y show: los 90 años de Carlos Menem and 30 photos. July 2, 2020, accessed December 23, 2020 (Spanish). 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Remo Rey: History of Latin America from the 20th century to the present . In: Beck's series . No. 1675 . CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54093-6 , p. 113, 138 .
4. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung. September 20, 1999.
5. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 15, 2013, p. 6.

predecessor	Office	successor
Raúl Alfonsín	President of Argentina 1989–1999	Fernando de la Rúa