Failures Of Carlos Menem As The President Of Argentina
During the reign of president Carlos Menem in 1990s, he takes a hard turn, imposing what he call “surgery without anaesthetic”. Menem’s policies turn Argentina into the model pupil of the IMF and the World Bank. Almost all national assets are privatized, currency markets are deregulated, and the peso is pegged to the U. S dollar at one-to-one. While Argentina’s GDP almost doubles, the unemployment rate soars from 6% to 18% as hundreds of thousands of workers are downsized in privatizations. The public debt soars, corruption scandals erupt on monthly basis. All the policy was approved by IMF and Washington.
Unfortunately Carlos miracles were turn into disaster. He had created a capitalist wild west people were lock out from their life savings thus, people were rejected not the politicians but the current model. In the last two weeks of December 2001 hundreds of thousands of argentites took the streets to protest the neoliberal policies that had driven the country into economic crisis. Organizations and movement of the people also emerged that pointed the way towards a hope for a different way of running society. Neighborhood assemblies that distributed food from grocery stores to the hungry, unemployed organizations that blocked highways until they were given jobs, and workers who re-opened closed factories under their control. Unemployed workers at an auto parts factory, the Forja San Martin, to reopen the factory as a worker-run cooperative. The factory had been closed for three years, and its workers couldn’t find jobs in a country where the official unemployment rate is 18%. So the workers occupy the factory and demand that the state turn over ownership to them so they can reopen it for production. And these occupied workplaces are run by the democratic assemblies of the employees where many decided to pay the workers equal wage.
On the other side is the law and order campaign of Carlos Menem, who introduced most of the Argentina’s neoliberal reform. His platform is specifically aim at the social movement to impose respect for the law and the right to private property. Opposing him is the populist Nestor Kirchner who many Argentines supporters as a rejection of neoliberalism, and a return to the peronist past of national populism that nationalized industry and solidified the power of union movement.
Thus the voice “our dreams do not fit in your ballot boxes” by the workers was mainly to oppose the Menem’s plan and were in not favor of his model where the future of the workers lie on the election and they don’t want the factories to be taken back by the Menem and his alliances.
