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When on January 20 you're watching on TV the presidential inauguration goings on, especially the evening balls, search the screen for a very distinctive couple who will surely be floating around the Bushes, both George W. and George H., and their wives. She, a tall, thirtysomething smashing blonde that looks like the beauty queen she once was — Miss Universe in 1987. He, a dapper, compact, with slicked-down hair and almost twice her age.
Meet the once and-very likely-future president of Argentina and his wife-to-be, Carlos Menem and Cecilia Bolocco, attending their first official international engagement together by invitation of the senior Bush, who forged a friendship of sorts with Menem-some say also an oil-and-gas business relationship — when one was in the White House and the other in Buenos Aires's Pink House.
Menem's present affair is somewhat low-key for a man that at the peak of his popularity was accurately described as flamboyant, racing around in his Ferrari, hosting visits by Madonna and supermodel Claudia Schiffer and carrying on a well-advertised relationship with a statuesque member of his cabinet. By then he famously had his guards remove his wife from the presidential palace when he became irritated with her. (The story of the divorce proceedings that followed had better ratings in Argentina than the top soap opera).
When in 1999 Menem left the presidential palace after 10 years as Argentina's president, his once prodigious poll ratings were barely in double digits, his second term was mired in corruption scandals and he was blocked by a constitutional bar preventing a third consecutive term in office, which he unsuccessfully fought to have lifted. However, the constitution allows him to run again in 2003.
Suggesting that Argentines had had enough of Menem's style at a time of rising unemployment, they chose as his successor Fernando de la Rua, who lists his hobbies as gardening and bird-watching, and declared himself to be "boring" during the presidential campaign.
De la Rua raised taxes just after he took office, a move that economists say snuffed out a nascent recovery from recession. His troubles worsened last October, when the vice president accused him of turning a blind eye to corruption and resigned. Reduced to its essentials, de la Rua's pact with the electorate consisted of two simple pledges, to clean up government and restart the economy; almost a year after his election he had not done well on either front.
Now, one of his best assets during the election-his serious, austere personality-has become a liability at a time when confidence has hit a new low at home and abroad. That startled investors into a sell-off of Argentine bonds, driving the country's borrowing costs up to unsustainable levels and ultimately forcing Argentina to seek a $40 billion credit package arranged by the International Monetary Fund to prevent a debt default. Unemployment continues to be high and real incomes are getting lower.
By last November de la Rua's approval rating had dropped to 29 percent from 72 percent just after he took office, while Menem's rating jumped to 21.5 percent from a low of 14.9 percent between September and November. He is seemingly everywhere, smiling from the pages of society magazines, jetting off to meet foreign leaders and generally behaving as if he were once again Argentina's president-in-waiting-and his liaison with Cecilia Bolocco hasn't hurt him at all.
Though the end of Menem's 10-year rule was marred by corruption scandals and a slide into recession, people are remembering that in its early years the country enjoyed robust economic growth as he rescued the country from economic disaster in 1991. He overturned decades of protectionism and state control of the economy, opened the economy to foreign investment by selling off state-owned industries and introduced pro-market reforms and, soon after he took office, pegged the peso to the U.S. dollar to quell four-digit inflation.
"The country's economic troubles are having the effect of floating Menem back up," says pollster Ricardo Rouvier. World financial circles also look forward to his possible return to power. says Carl Ross, who heads emerging markets at Bear Stearns: "The appeal of Menem right now is that he is viewed as a strong leader and he supports dollarization". But there's a caveat: "The liability that he has is the idea that there are skeletons in the closet that are staying there for now, but might come out at any point."
This doesn't seem to worry Menem. He has been laying out an economic platform that could form the basis of his campaign in 2003. This includes the substitution of the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar, a move that would end periodic bouts of speculation that the currency would be devalued.
"This process of globalization is going to also end up globalizing the currencies," Menem says. "Someday there will only be three currencies, the yen, euro and the dollar."
Menem shrugs off government charges that they inherited the economic mess from him, including an economy that contracted by 3 percent in his final year while the debt load and budget deficit swelled. "There are two kinds of inheritors," Menem says. "There are the prodigious sons and the prodigal sons, who are never happy and keep asking for more."
Analysts say Menem can benefit by cultivating his image as a national statesman, even by playing a conciliatory role to aid the de la Rua government over the next two years before aggressively seeking the presidency. Such a role could also set him apart from his contenders for the Peronist party nomination-three provincial governors who he may try to paint as squabbling regional leaders.
Meanwhile, stickers have begun to spring up all over Buenos Aires saying: "Menem — Come Back!"
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com