Freedom in the World 1999 - Argentina

1999 Scores

Status: Free
Freedom Rating: 2.5
Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 2

Ratings Change

Argentina's political rights rating changed from 3 to 2 because of a victory by the political opposition in free and fair presidential elections in October.

Overview

In 1999, Fernando de la Rua, the candidate of the multiparty opposition Alliance, capitalized on public weariness with President Carlos S. Menem's ten-year reign to decisively defeat Menem's Peronist Party replacement in presidential elections held on October 24. Menem, who won praise for his free market reforms and pro-U.S. foreign policy, left de la Rua and the heterogeneous coalition he heads a legacy of widespread public corruption, violent crime, and swelling numbers of urban poor. Adding to de la Rua's problems are a senate packed with Menem supporters, a politicized and unpopular judiciary, and security forces seasoned with former death squad activists and former members of a lethal military regime.

The Argentine Republic was established after independence from Spain in 1816. Democratic rule was often interrupted by military coups. The end of Juan Peron's authoritarian rule in 1955 led to a series of right-wing military dictatorships as well as left-wing and nationalist violence. Argentina returned to elected civilian rule in 1983, after seven years of repression of suspected leftist guerrillas and other dissidents.

As amended in 1994, the 1853 constitution provides for a president elected for four years with the option of reelection to one term. Presidential candidates must win 45 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. The legislature consists of a 257-member chamber of deputies elected for six years, with half the seats renewable every three years, and a 72-member senate nominated by elected provincial legislatures for nine-year terms, with one-third of the seats renewable every three years. Two senators are directly elected in the newly autonomous Buenos Aires federal district.

As provincial governor, Menem, running an orthodox Peronist platform of nationalism and state intervention in the economy, won a six-year presidential term in 1989, amidst hyperinflation and food riots. Once inaugurated, Menem discarded statist Peronist traditions by implementing, mostly by decree, an economic liberalization program. In 1995, Menem handily won reelection for four years and his Peronist Party also eked out a narrow majority in both houses of congress.

Corruption and unemployment were at the head of voters' concerns when in October 1997, they handed Menem's Peronists their first nationwide defeat in a decade. The Alliance, composed of the centrist Radical Party and the center-left Front for a Country in Solidarity, won nearly 46 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Menem's party. On November 29, 1998, Buenos Aires mayor and Radical Party leader Fernando de la Rua won a contested primary to become the Alliance candidate in the 1999 presidential elections. In response, Menem orchestrated the packing of the Argentine senate with two members of his ruling party in an effort to stave off corruption inquiries until at least 2001.

In 1999, bickering between Menem and the Peronist Party presidential nominee, Buenos Aires governor Eduardo Duhalde, dominated much of the political landscape. A decision, promoted by Menem, to uncouple most of the provincial gubernatorial races from the presidential contest helped Peronists win in the key districts of Cordoba and Santa Fe. However, the decision proved fatal for the hapless Duhalde, who was beaten by de la Rua 48.5 percent to 38 percent. The Peronists retained control of the senate, with 35 of the 67 seats, and they hold the governnorships in 18 of 23 provinces. In October Transparency International ranked Argentina 72 out of 99 nations rated for public corruption.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens can change their government through elections. Constitutional guarantees regarding freedom of religion and the right to organize political parties, civic organizations, and labor unions are generally respected. The 1999 elections were generally free and fair, with serious complaints of voter fraud in one province. More worrisome was the trend towards campaigning through the mass media, a costly process financed by money from undisclosed sources.

Journalists and human rights groups generally are allowed to operate freely, but both have been subject to various forms of intimidation, including more than 1,000 beatings, kidnappings, and telephone death threats during Menem's rule. International pressure kept the Menem government from passing a series of restrictive press laws. In 1997, an Argentine photojournalist was murdered in a manner reminiscent of the death squads of the 1970s. A well-known businessman with extensive ties to Menem's inner circle and, allegedly, organized crime was accused of instigating the outrage. The businessman committed suicide in 1998 after convincing testimony linked him to the murder. In May 1999, a crusading editor of a Patagonian weekly was also murdered.

Labor is dominated by Peronist unions. Union influence, however, has diminished because of corruption scandals, internal divisions, and restrictions on public sector strikes decreed by Menem to pave the way for his privatization program. In 1998, a deadlocked congress approved a government-sponsored labor "flexibility" initiative after a congressional deputy allegedly filmed by state intelligence agents in a gay bordello the agents operated changed positions on the measure and voted for it.

Menem's authoritarian ways and manipulation of the judiciary have resulted in the undermining of the country's separation of powers and the rule of law. In 1990, Menem pushed a bill through the Peronist-controlled senate that allowed him to stack the supreme court with an additional four members and to fill the judiciary with politically loyal judges. He used the supreme court to uphold decrees removing the comptroller general and other officials mandated to probe government wrongdoing. Overall, the judicial system is politicized, inefficient, and riddled with the corruption endemic to all branches of government. In 1999, as the election hopes of Menem's party were dashed, the judiciary appeared to take a somewhat more independent course. The politization of the judiciary, however, remains a grave problem.

Public safety became a significant electoral issue in 1999. Polls show that four out of every ten Argentines living in greater Buenos Aires had been robbed in 1998. Police misconduct, often seemingly promoted by senior government officials including Menem himself, resulted in a number of allegedly extrajudicial executions by law enforcement officers. Arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment by police, frequent occurrences, are rarely punished in civil courts owing to intimidation of witnesses and judges. Criminal court judges are frequent targets of anonymous threats. The Buenos Aires provincial police, in particular, are heavily involved in drug trafficking, extortion, vice, and the collecting of political funds for the ruling Peronist Party. In 1999, Menem's vice president, Carlos Ruckauf, was elected governor of Buenos Aires province after having suggested police shoot at criminals' arms and legs without prior warning, "pumping them full of bullets." After his election Ruckauf named to top provincial justice posts a former military coup leader and a former policeman accused of systematic torture in detention camps during a previous armed forces dictatorship.

In 1999, military intelligence agents in Cordoba were caught spying on court workers investigating the fate of babies kidnapped from their illegally detained mothers during the so-called dirty war that occurred from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

The investigation of a 1994 car bombing of a Jewish organization, in which more than 80 people died, has languished because of sloppy police work at the crime scene and the alleged complicity by members of the security forces with the terrorists. The Roman Catholic majority enjoys freedom of religious expression. The 250,000-strong Jewish community is a frequent target of anti-Semitic vandalism. Neo-Nazi organizations and other anti-Semitic groups, many tied to remnants of the security services, remain active.