Similarities between the outcome of Argentina’s elections last month and those in Mexico last summer are remarkable and encouraging. In both countries voters thwacked the smug ruling elites with a reminder of two essential elements of democracy: competition and accountability.
Though not nearly as deeply entrenched as Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, the Peronist party of President Carlos Menem had ruled since 1989 and never lost an election in the key Buenos Aires province, which holds 40 percent of the electorate.
Menem had so convinced himself of his indispensability that in 1995 he pushed a constitutional amendment allowing a second presidential term in office–one of his campaign slogans was “It’s me or chaos!” Rumors flew that he planned another touchup of the Constitution that would allow him to run again in 1999.
Instead, the Peronist Party was handed a crushing defeat, and like the PRI in Mexico, it lost its majority in the lower house of Congress. The Peronists got beat in the capital and all over the country.
The loss came at the hands of a three-month coalition of the Radical and the Frepaso parties, led by Graciela Fernandez Meijide, 66, who lost a teenage son during the “dirty war” the military fought against suspected subversives during the 1970s. Much like Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in Mexico, Fernandez is now considered a presidential contender in 1999.
Both countries have undergone dramatic liberalization of their economies during the past decade, with some remarkable results. The inflation rate in Argentina has dropped from a mind-boggling 5000 percent a year in 1990 to virtually zero today, and the economy is growing at an annual rate of 8 percent.
Despite these gains, voters were galvanized against Superman Menem and his party by the high levels of unemployment, a non-stop soap opera of official scandals and corruption, and, most of all, by the indifference of those in power.
“The age of omnipotence and arrogance is over,” commented a strategist for the winning coalition, using a phrase that opponents of the PRI probably could have used in Mexico after the last election.
Rather than face the shortcomings of his administration, Menem tried fearmongering, charging that a vote for the opposition would undermine the recent economic gains. No one believed it: Fernandez, like Cardenas, has vowed that she is not about to strangle the goose laying golden eggs of economic growth.
The lesson in both countries is that people matter, and free elections are the essential mechanism for regularly reminding governments of that. High-level corruption, an inefficient judiciary unable to cope with waves of crime and self-dealing elites are as inimical to political freedom as they are to true economic reform.
So don’t expect either Argentina or Mexico to turn back on economic reforms. Just watch as both countries develop fairer and more equitable economic systems–and leaders get used to paying attention to both the people and the political opposition.
