MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina Swears in 3 New Ministers

In the latest reshuffle of his embattled Cabinet, Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde on Friday swore in three new ministers and brought radical trade union power into the heart of his government.

Duhalde, who since becoming president in January has overseen a default on Argentina's $141 billion debt and a drastic devaluation of the peso, swore in former labor minister and union leader Alfredo Atanasof as his new Cabinet chief and lawmaker Jorge Matzkin as interior minister.

But the most controversial appointment was Graciela Camano to fill Atanasof's spot at the Labor Ministry. Camano is the wife of radical union leader and Peronist Sen. Luis Barrionuevo.

Duhalde has often been criticized for shying away from tough decisions on fixing South America's battered economy. Now he has come under increasing fire for his appointments, especially that of Camano.

Patricia Bullrich, labor minister under former President Fernando de la Rua, accused the government of "propping itself up with a closed, anti-democratic...union model." "Duhalde is repeating the old trick of ... previous Argentine governments: bringing in the trade unions in moments of political weakness," wrote Julio Blanck, a political commentator at the respected daily Clarin.

Appointed by Congress rather than a popular vote, Duhalde came to power on his reputation as an able, though populist, politician after the country burned through four presidents in less than two weeks.

Many Argentines hoped the former governor of Buenos Aires province would at least have the political clout to set the country on a stable course and oversee the start of an economic recovery after four straight years of crippling recession.

But Duhalde has disappointed, changing course at what many saw were crucial moments. He has failed to lift an acutely unpopular banking freeze that has kept Argentines' savings cooped up in their bank accounts since last December. He has also failed to win international support and clinch renewed funding from the International Monetary Fund. IMF and U.S. Treasury officials have demanded Duhalde present a sustainable economic plan before any fresh financial assistance can be granted.

"If, in a crisis, the president shows himself hesitant, contradictory, indecisive or poorly prepared, the signal he passes onto society at large is that things are very serious," said former Economy Minister Ricardo Lopez Murphy.

Duhalde has also failed to impress Wall Street.
Two weeks ago, by failing to back a plan to return frozen bank deposits to savers as government bonds, he effectively forced his former economy minister, Jorge Remes Lenicov, to resign. Remes' replacement, Roberto Lavagna, told foreign reporters Friday he needed to put out the biggest fires first, before embarking on what he hopes will be an export-led recovery, fueled by a weaker peso.

"No program would be credible if we didn't clean up the existing situation in the very short term," Lavagna said.

Although negotiations with the IMF were proceeding "as fast as possible," Lavagna predicted it would be "May or June" before a package of at least $9 billion of IMF emergency funding could be concluded.