MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Menem plots comeback to power in Argentina

“Menem returns!” proclaims a message scrawled on the dusty colonial square in La Rioja, a far-flung Argentine city near the border with Chile.

In fact, virtually everywhere one turns in La Rioja there are references to the return of the province's most famous son, the former president Carlos Menem.

Posters hail the event from street lampposts. Relatives with designer suits and slicked-back hair stop to talk to cafe patrons about it. The Menem family vineyard here even produces a red wine designed to be opened when he strolls back in to the presidential palace after several years in political exile.

“To the return,” reads the bottle, on sale in a corner store in his home town of Anillaco. “You may open this bottle in December 2003 or drink it now and toast the many things he did in office.” The reverse side of the bottle lists some of those achievements, which included pegging the peso to the dollar, vanquishing four-digit inflation rates and embarking on a sweeping programme of free-market reforms.

In short, Mr Menem insists he rescued the country from economic and political chaos once before and says he can do it again. Mr Menem had been hoping that his return would come at the end of next year, when the next elections are scheduled. But Argentina's voracious crisis - which has claimed two governments since December and five economy ministers in just over a year - has raised hopes among his handlers that their time may come earlier.

With the economy in free fall, inflation picking up and public unrest on the rise again, few think the interim government of Eduardo Duhalde can hold out for long. The 71-year-old Mr Menem says he is “ready like a boy scout” to assume power if elections are brought forward. The problem? The flamboyant Mr Menem is widely thought to be corrupt and is blamed by most Argentines for contributing to the country's economic collapse. Today he trails miserably in the polls: indeed, the only poll he has led recently was one in which people were asked to name a candidate they would “never” vote for. Still, Mr Menem insists that Argentines will overcome their distaste in a time of need.

“There simply is no other,” he says in an interview at the governor's mansion in La Rioja, which has become a campaign headquarters of sorts. “The tide is already turning.” No serious political analyst is forecasting his return to the presidential palace he occupied for 10 years until 1999, but few are willing to count him out entirely. Even foes recognise the wily Mr Menem as the undisputed master of Argentine politics, with a keen sense of what appeals to the complex psychology of his countrymen. He has also come back from the political wilderness several times before in his extraordinary 30-year career.

The notion of return has an almost mystical resonance in Argentina, a deeply nostalgic nation whose history often appears to move more in circles than along straight lines. Even before Eva Peron uttered the famous words, “I will return and will be millions!”, political figures throughout history have tried to convince Argentines they can save the country from whatever convulsion it is experiencing with just one more spell in office.

Eva's husband, Juan Domingo Peron, returned in 1973 after 18 years in exile and reclaimed the presidency. He died the following year, leaving the country in the hands of his inept second wife, Isabelita, and a murderous political henchman nicknamed “The Warlock”, who practised black magic with her and sent out death squads against political enemies. More recently, Domingo Cavallo, the economy minister during Mr Menem's first term, returned last year promising to pull the country out of a four-year economic recession. He resigned amid nationwide rioting nine months later with the financial system in tatters and a nation on the edge of the largest debt default in history.

Mr Cavallo is now in jail in connection with an arms smuggling case that also caught Mr Menem last year. Mr Menem says he is confident that his erstwhile economy tsar and political nemesis will “soon recover his freedom”, and says he himself has little to fear from the continuing case. He said he will succeed where Mr Cavallo failed.

His prescription is simple, if a little far-fetched: to secure a “strategic alliance” with the US, get $20bn-$25bn from the multilateral lending agencies, and replace the peso entirely with the dollar. There must also be a profound reform of the state to correct the chronic spending imbalances that have plagued Argentina. Why didn't he do these things when he was in power? “Time just ran out,” he says, somewhat wistfully. He also criticises Mr Duhalde for devaluing the peso, calling the move “a momentous blunder”. He says the government has been “immersed in a sea of contradictions” and calls on his long-time political rival to become a “real leader”.

But despite the desperate situation, Mr Menem remains confident that he could find a solution. “The situation is dramatic. But our country has enormous possibilities and we have lived through difficult times before,” he says. “With the natural and human resources we have and the proper administration of the [foreign currency] reserves we have left, we should be able to emerge from this in three or four years.” As for the bottle of Menem red, he has one piece of advice: “Don't open it quite yet,” he says with a wink.