schoolyard fight
These days the nation’s political commentators are obsessed by the rivalry between acting president Eduardo Duhalde and his archrival, former president Carlos Menem. Since both are members of the Peronist party, they lack a party division to support or legitimate their conflict and so the personal elements of the fight have quickly come to the fore.
Menem, in this contest, plays the role of the schoolyard bully. Rich, Ferrari-driving, trophy wife sporting, plastic surgery-adjusted, Menem manages to get his name in the news every few days with another insult to Duhalde. Recently, for example, Menem said that he’d give Duhalde a 1 or 2 out of 10 for his job as president. His campaign posters feature pictures of Duhalde (and Menem’s other opponents) looking loser-like, and ask, basically, “what doubts do you have?”
Duhalde, meanwhile, is the nerdy teacher’s pet. Dorky-looking, short and pudgy, he currently has power behind him, but you can almost hear Menem growling “just wait ‘til I get you outside!”
No Argentine we know will admit to liking either one of these guys, but as an outsider I find myself rooting for Duhalde, hoping he’ll sock the heck out of Menem like the time the dork took out the captain of the football time with one punch.
Duhalde, as my mentors at the Herald emphasize by insistently calling him the “caretaker” president, was not elected. Rather, he was appointed by Congress to complete ousted president De La Rúa’s term. Duhalde shortened his scheduled stay by six months after a deadly police-protester clash in Avellaneda, and he is now scheduled to leave office in May.
Duhalde could run for president, maybe with a little fine-tuning of the rules, and everybody presumed he would. His early denials of presidential aspirations seemed insincere, and the media poked fun at him for feigning disinterest. Somehow, though, January rolled around with Duhalde still denying that he would run, despite entreaties from Peronist state governors.
This week, Duhalde endorsed another candidate for president, Kirchner, telling Brazil’s president Lula yesterday that Kirchner will be the next president of Argentina. Unfortunately, Duhalde may be the only person to believe this. For the rest of the country (judging by the papers), Kirchner is hard to take seriously, with his fishlike appearance and history of governing a little-troubled, rich province.
More and more, it looks like Menem will be hard to beat. And, from my perspective, it seems all Duhalde’s desperate anti-Menem maneuvering is doing is calling attention to Menem’s candidacy, making his election seem inevitable in the same way as do the ubiquitous blue Menem posters. Wouldn’t Duhalde be better off to do as Clinton did towards the end of his term and ignore the elections? Being left alone probably wasn’t good for Al Gore (although he did win the election), but is seems it could help deflate Menem. As it is, the Duhalde team looks like a bunch of rabbits at the bottom of a hill, with a large Menem boulder poised to roll down and crush them.
previously there was Bryan Adams
afterwards you have would you like some toast with that jam?