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2,000 | <s>[INST] "A country that took 50 years to destroy itself can't [/INST] rebuild in 10," says Vicente Mastrocola, head of the plastic workers' union and an ardent Menem supporter. </s> |
2,001 | <s>[INST] Such sentiments have given a boost to an [/INST] informal re-election effort that only a few months ago seemed likely to fail. </s> |
2,002 | <s>[INST] After all, the 1994 constitution [/INST] prohibits presidents from holding more than two consecutive terms. </s> |
2,003 | <s>[INST] But constitutions aren't typically written in stone [/INST] in the region, and there now appears to be some wiggle room. </s> |
2,004 | <s>[INST] For much of this year, President Menem's operators have been testing the waters, [/INST] affixing "Menem 1999" slogans to poster boards, bumpers and even a birthday cake for the president when he turned 68 on July 2. </s> |
2,005 | <s>[INST] Most dismissed the campaign as a tool to strengthen the [/INST] president in his final, lameduck year, and President Menem himself has avoided specific comment on the subject. </s> |
2,006 | <s>[INST] Over the past week, however, Argentina's political prospects changed sharply [/INST] as Mr. Menem's operators have now launched a serious effort to legitimize his candidacy for Peronist primaries next April. </s> |
2,007 | <s>[INST] In an effort to show popular support, the Menemistas suggested [/INST] that a plebiscite on the re-election issue be held in Mr. Menem's home province of La Rioja. </s> |
2,008 | <s>[INST] Mr. Menem's chief political enemy in the Peronist party, Buenos [/INST] Aires provincial governor Eduardo Duhalde, then countered with a proposal to hold a plebiscite in his province. </s> |
2,009 | <s>[INST] Now the battle is likely to [/INST] spill over into a national Peronist convention scheduled for this week. </s> |
2,010 | <s>[INST] If the Menemistas can isolate Mr. Duhalde's allies, they will [/INST] suggest that the high court exempt Mr. Menem's first term, which began in 1989, from the two-term constitutional limit. </s> |
2,011 | <s>[INST] Failing that, they may push in [/INST] November for a national nonbinding referendum on Mr. Menem's re-election. </s> |
2,012 | <s>[INST] There is concern among U.S. investors and policy makers [/INST] that Argentina proceed with a legal and fair electoral process that enhances the country's democracy. </s> |
2,013 | <s>[INST] The U.S.'s "predisposition is to be neutral," but [/INST] the re-election effort "must be completely legal and constitutional," said one U.S. official this week. </s> |
2,014 | <s>[INST] Any democratic backsliding in the region is problematic to the Clinton administration because [/INST] new economic alliances, such as the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, are being sold to the American public as policies that also foment democracy. </s> |
2,015 | <s>[INST] Argentina's political battles have a remarkable way of [/INST] surging and disappearing, and the latest rupture between the Peronists also may subside. </s> |
2,016 | <s>[INST] Meeting with reporters recently, Argentina's ambassador [/INST] to the U.S., Diego Guelar, said, "Peronism is like tango. </s> |
2,017 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 295 of 400 Specialists: Latin America and the [/INST] market: The free society on trial Author: Anonymous Publication info: The Economist 349.8095 (Nov 21, 1998): 23-25. </s> |
2,018 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: Tough times lie ahead [/INST] throughout Latin America, albeit the much-feared meltdown has not happened. </s> |
2,019 | <s>[INST] For the eight biggest economies, combined, [/INST] J. P. Morgan, an American bank, foresees nil growth next year. </s> |
2,020 | <s>[INST] In Latin America little or no [/INST] growth does not mean standing still; it means sliding backwards. </s> |
2,021 | <s>[INST] The setback is all the [/INST] more bitter because things had been going well. </s> |
2,022 | <s>[INST] It is not hard [/INST] to detect political resistance to market reform. </s> |
2,023 | <s>[INST] Some voters and legislators alike [/INST] plainly think there has been too much already. </s> |
2,024 | <s>[INST] Latin America's recent financial scare will prompt a rethink about economic policy - [/INST] and should give governments an incentive to far more boldness both in structural reform and in tackling the many defects of Latin American democracy. </s> |
2,025 | <s>[INST] Full text: Headnote Will Latin America's coming economic slowdown [/INST] undermine the region's broad but quite recent rediscovery of free markets and democracy Probably not. </s> |
2,026 | <s>[INST] But it ought to make reformers less complacent THE 14,ooo [/INST] production workers at Fiat's giant car factory near the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte took a holiday last week. </s> |
2,027 | <s>[INST] But it is one they would rather not [/INST] have had: for the third time in two months, the factory was temporarily closed. </s> |
2,028 | <s>[INST] Brazil's car industry, bursting with new plants, and, [/INST] until a year ago, full of expansionary optimism, is now grappling with lay-offs and short-time. </s> |
2,029 | <s>[INST] Output is running at 25% below [/INST] last year's levels, and a record zoo,ooo unsold cars are stockpiled. </s> |
2,030 | <s>[INST] As $30 billion fled in August and September, the [/INST] central bank first raised interest rates ferociously (to 43% and up, while inflation is 3%). </s> |
2,031 | <s>[INST] Then-with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso safely re-elected-the government announced [/INST] tax rises and spending cuts, to slash a fiscal deficit heading for 8% of GDP. </s> |
2,032 | <s>[INST] Congress is yet to back [/INST] the new measures, foreigners to resume investment. </s> |
2,033 | <s>[INST] Brazil will probably pull through-but at [/INST] a cost: some economists see unemployment reaching 13% next year. </s> |
2,034 | <s>[INST] And though Brazil is worst hit, tough [/INST] times lie ahead throughout Latin America, albeit the much-feared meltdown has not happened. </s> |
2,035 | <s>[INST] Mexico's peso recently slid by some 20% (before a [/INST] modest recovery) and a resultant blip in inflation may wipe out a slight recovery in real wages. </s> |
2,036 | <s>[INST] Many businesses in Mexico [/INST] are scaling down investment as profits fall. </s> |
2,037 | <s>[INST] Argentina's industrial production in September [/INST] was 2% less than a year earlier. </s> |
2,038 | <s>[INST] This month its car plants [/INST] cut hours, after a slump in sales to Brazil. </s> |
2,039 | <s>[INST] Even Chile, after a decade of [/INST] 7% annual average growth, will barely expand in 1999. </s> |
2,040 | <s>[INST] All on top of the blows [/INST] inflicted farther north by El Nino and now Hurricane Mitch. </s> |
2,041 | <s>[INST] For the eight biggest economies combined,J.P. [/INST] Morgan, an American bank, foresees nil growth next year. </s> |
2,042 | <s>[INST] But in Latin America little or [/INST] no growth does not mean standing still: it means sliding backwards. </s> |
2,043 | <s>[INST] Prosperity postponed The setback is all [/INST] the more bitter because things had been going well. </s> |
2,044 | <s>[INST] The region's early-198os debt crisis plunged it into [/INST] several years of stagflation and rising poverty, but also hastened the end of military regimes. </s> |
2,045 | <s>[INST] Since then, democratic governments in many countries have [/INST] brought in free-market reforms, taming inflation, opening to foreign trade and investment, and privatising extensively. </s> |
2,046 | <s>[INST] These reforms were controversial, some fiercely resisted, because, at first, they often seemed to [/INST] favour the rich, while hurting some middle-class people, and unionised workers who had previously done well out of the state; many now found themselves jobless. </s> |
2,047 | <s>[INST] Yet, despite a scare in 1995, after Mexico's peso collapse [/INST] brought recession there and in Argentina, and stress elsewhere, reform at last seemed to be paying off. </s> |
2,048 | <s>[INST] Both those countries recovered swiftly, and in 1997 Latin [/INST] America overall recorded its best economic performance since 1982, growing at 5.5%, with inflation below to%. </s> |
2,049 | <s>[INST] Those who opposed freemarket reform (neoliberalismo to Latin Americans, [/INST] though this is more a term of political abuse than of economic analysis) feel vindicated. </s> |
2,050 | <s>[INST] Look, they say, tearing down the barriers to trade and [/INST] investment has left our economies even more vulnerable, innocent victims of the volatile humours offoreign fund managers. </s> |
2,051 | <s>[INST] These critics, who include the traditional left, nationalists, and some businessmen, argue [/INST] that governments should instead favour "national" investment and products, impose exchange controls, and (say some) intervene more actively to redistribute wealth. </s> |
2,052 | <s>[INST] In many countries, the [/INST] pay-off from reform has indeed been disappointing. </s> |
2,053 | <s>[INST] True, Latin America's widespread poverty, inequality and [/INST] discontent pre-dated the reforms; but that does not make them any less real. </s> |
2,054 | <s>[INST] It would be naive to [/INST] assume that democracies can forever thrive against such frustrations. </s> |
2,055 | <s>[INST] And there is a precedent: the collapse of international credit and of world demand for [/INST] commodities at the start of the 193os ended half a century or so of civilian regimes and a liberal economic order in many countries of the region. </s> |
2,056 | <s>[INST] Those who foresee an authoritarian or populist reaction against reform point to Venezuela, and the avenging [/INST] figure of Hugo Chavez, the then paratroop colonel who in i992 came close to toppling democracy with a would-be coup, and who now is the front-runner in next month's presidential election. </s> |
2,057 | <s>[INST] True, part of his appeal [/INST] lies in his promise to clean up politics. </s> |
2,058 | <s>[INST] True too, he has backed away from earlier threats to [/INST] take dictatorial powers and impose a siege economy (and debt default And of course he may not win. </s> |
2,059 | <s>[INST] But his commitment to [/INST] democracy or to the market remains untested. </s> |
2,060 | <s>[INST] He might halt Venezuela's opening of its [/INST] oil reserves to foreign companies, and raise tariffs to protect agriculture and manufacturing. </s> |
2,061 | <s>[INST] He has talked of a constituent [/INST] assembly, which might close Congress and grant him sweeping powers. </s> |
2,062 | <s>[INST] That route is one already travelled, in 1992, by Peru's Alberto Fujimori, today a reelected [/INST] autocrat who-whatever his neoliberal economics-has defied public opinion in pushing first legislators, then judges, to pull down all constitutional bars to his running for a third term in 2000. </s> |
2,063 | <s>[INST] There are authoritarian threats elsewhere: Colombia's extreme left and right; General Pinochet's friends [/INST] in Chile's business, security services and the Independent Democratic Union, its unmodemised right-wing opposition party; Lino Oviedo, Paraguay's former army commander and would-be political messiah. </s> |
2,064 | <s>[INST] It is not hard, either, [/INST] to detect political resistance to market reform. </s> |
2,065 | <s>[INST] Some voters and legislators alike [/INST] plainly think there has been too much already. </s> |
2,066 | <s>[INST] In Mexico, structural reform such as [/INST] privatisation has made little progress under President Ernesto Zedillo. </s> |
2,067 | <s>[INST] The opposition, which since last year has controlled Congress, wants to oust Guillermo Ortiz, the central-bank president, a free-marketeer because of his earlier role in an ill-conceived bail-out of the country's private-sector banks (and bankers) In Brazil, senior figures in [/INST] Mr Cardoso's own party have not concealed their dislike of the new austerity package, nor their support for higher tariffs and controls on capital outflows-in other words, a selective debt default Argentina's Congress this year thwarted a government proposal to free the rigid labour market; instead, it passed a law that keeps tradeunion power largely intact And presidential elections next year could bring centreleft leaders to power in Argentina, Chile and two small countries, El Salvador and Uruguay. </s> |
2,068 | <s>[INST] Is Latin America about to turn [/INST] its back on the market, or even on democracy? </s> |
2,069 | <s>[INST] Look closer and Mr Chavez emerges [/INST] as an exception, not the leader of a trend. </s> |
2,070 | <s>[INST] Much of Venezuela's discontent [/INST] stems not from reform, but its absence. </s> |
2,071 | <s>[INST] Oil financed a bloated state, and a patronage system operated by the two traditional parties, which alternated [/INST] in central power from 1958 until 1994 (and that years new president, Rafael Caldera, founder of one of them and president from 1969 to 1974, was hardly a break with the past. </s> |
2,072 | <s>[INST] Neither Venezuela's economy nor its [/INST] political system has adapted to a low oil price. </s> |
2,073 | <s>[INST] No longer able to hand out largesse, [/INST] the old politicians have earned mounting public anger at corruption, inflation and poverty. </s> |
2,074 | <s>[INST] A generation ago, this was Latin America's [/INST] richest country; today, two in three of its people are poor. </s> |
2,075 | <s>[INST] In differing ways, both Mexico and Colombia also share the turmoil associated [/INST] with moving from a political system in which power was confined to a relatively restricted elite to a more inclusive democracy. </s> |
2,076 | <s>[INST] Yet many of Venezuela's ills are [/INST] more typical of Latin America's recent past than of its future. </s> |
2,077 | <s>[INST] Where stability, both political and economic, [/INST] has been achieved, voters have shown they value it. </s> |
2,078 | <s>[INST] Brazilians in 1994 elected Mr Cardoso, who as finance [/INST] minister that year had launched the real and the anti-inflationary plan of which it was the centre. </s> |
2,079 | <s>[INST] His opponent then was Luiz Ignacio [/INST] Lula da Silva, standing on a populist, "old-left" platform. </s> |
2,080 | <s>[INST] This October, despite, or because of, its [/INST] economic difficulties, Brazil chose Mr Cardoso again, over the same rival. </s> |
2,081 | <s>[INST] Mexico's left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution clings [/INST] to old-left ideas; polls suggest defeat for it in the presidential election of 2000. </s> |
2,082 | <s>[INST] In contrast, why do leftish candidates [/INST] in Argentina, Chile and El Salvador look well placed? </s> |
2,083 | <s>[INST] In large part, because they have moved to the centre, accepting the market [/INST] and the importance of macroeconomic stability, though (or, indeed, and) wanting to complement it with political reforms, or, for example, tighter regulation of privatised monopolies. </s> |
2,084 | <s>[INST] Perhaps not coincidentally, these are the countries [/INST] where structural reform has gone furthest, and growth has been strong. </s> |
2,085 | <s>[INST] An unfinished agenda That said, Latin America's recent financial scare will prompt a rethink [/INST] about economic policy-and should give governments an incentive to far more boldness both in structural reform and in tackling the many defects of Latin American democracy. </s> |
2,086 | <s>[INST] Brazil's trouble arose partly from unlucky timing-its victory over inflation was still unconsolidated when the Asian crisis struck-but mainly because its politicians [/INST] had seen no urgency in tackling the fiscal deficit (whose size was in part due to the end of inflation) as long as foreigners were ready to finance it When the world took fright, Brazil's response was complicated by this October's elections. </s> |
2,087 | <s>[INST] The government shirked some of the deficit-cutting promised [/INST] last year, and held off announcing some of this year's steps till voting was over. </s> |
2,088 | <s>[INST] Elsewhere, most governments reacted to the market [/INST] shock with similar orthodoxy, tightening monetary and fiscal policy, and faster. </s> |
2,089 | <s>[INST] In several countries, financial stress [/INST] is in fact likely to stimulate swifter market reform. </s> |
2,090 | <s>[INST] Brazil's government at last this month [/INST] won congressional approval for its much resisted pension reform. </s> |
2,091 | <s>[INST] It plans new laws [/INST] to make the labour market more flexible. </s> |
2,092 | <s>[INST] Ecuador, like Venezuela an oil exporter, this [/INST] year embarked on a long-postponed stabilisation programme, involving privatisation and an iMF agreement. </s> |
2,093 | <s>[INST] Chile has approved a law [/INST] to cut its already low import duties. </s> |
2,094 | <s>[INST] Several countries, including Guatemala [/INST] and Argentina, are pushing on with privatisation. </s> |
2,095 | <s>[INST] Confounding past stereotypes, Latin America is thus eschewing both a [/INST] return to populism and a general retreat to protectionism (though Brazil has fiddled with anti-dumping rules and tariffs). </s> |
2,096 | <s>[INST] And while Mr Cardoso and others have talked of a [/INST] 0.5% tax on short-term capital inflows, until there are again flows to tax that is little more than talk. </s> |
2,097 | <s>[INST] Both Brazil and Chile have had such [/INST] taxes-and have eased them in the past year as capital has grown scarcer. </s> |
2,098 | <s>[INST] As to control on capital outflows, [/INST] such as Malaysia imposed recently, Latin America has resisted this. </s> |
2,099 | <s>[INST] It had controls in the early 198os, yet plenty of [/INST] local money managed to flee the debt crisis then, not to return for a decade or more. </s> |
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