MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“More liabilities than assets”

President Néstor Kirchner yesterday marked 20 years since democracy was restored after the military dictatorship, describing Argentina's worst-ever economic crisis with a subdued euphemism, “liabilities outweigh assets.”

Speaking in his home province of Santa Cruz, he urged politicians to steer clear from entrenched corruption practices and help rebuild the working and business classes that, many argue, were mainly destroyed during the tenure of neo-conservative Peronist Carlos Menem (1989-1999). "A nation without workers who consume and without its own bourgeoisie has no future," said the centre-left Peronist President, seeking to allay criticism that he has adopted an anti-business stance. Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner ? who doesn't like to be called First Lady ? chose a cruder tone warning that hard times lie ahead. "The black hole we are plunged in is not something that can be rebuilt (sic) overnight."

The crisis in this formerly rich nation pushed 60 percent of its 37 million residents into poverty, took unemployment to 16 percent (reckoning over two million people getting a 150-peso jobless subsidy as "employed"), drove the public debt to 180 billion dollars and forced Argentina to declare the world's largest sovereign default in history in late 2001.

Also, crime skyrocketed prompting the President to accuse Buenos Aires province police officers of being behind a wave of kidnappings and urging a purge of the force. Kirchner played down the fact that he yesterday started his own four-year term. "We came to power on May 25," he said to justify the absence of official ceremonies.

Until yesterday, he served the term left incomplete by former caretaker Eduardo Duhalde, Buenos Aires province strongman and his political benefactor with whom he is now locked in a bitter dispute for power.

Duhalde, in turn, replaced Alliance president Fernando de la Rúa, who should have served until yesterday had he not quit amid crisis-related violence that cost over 30 lives and also forced the resignation of his successor after only seven days.

Source: by Guillermo Háskel - Bs. Aires Herald