Global Policy Forum

By Anthony Faiola

Politics gets personal

Franco Caviglia, a tall, dashing congressman, was recently enjoying an espresso at the Casablanca café near Argentina's neoclassical Congress building when a group of people advanced on his table. They berated him with insults and shoves, leading Caviglia to attempt a fast exit. But the mob of normally level-headed diners barred the door, holding him captive for a half-hour before he was rescued by the police.

His crime: being a politician in Argentina.

In a nation suffering financial collapse, it is open season on politicians of every stripe. Impoverished and furious, Argentines are blaming their leaders for their woes, sparking a wave of attacks against elected and appointed political figures and igniting calls for an overhaul of a two-decade-old democratic system that citizens say has grown bloated, corrupt and unresponsive.

Although deepest here, the sentiments in Argentina highlight a rise of resentment against democratically elected leaders across Latin America. Following the fall of dictatorships in every nation in the region except Cuba, countries as diverse as Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Venezuela have embraced democratic governments, only to find they often are accompanied by corruption and economic stagnation.

Even leaders who recently rose to power from outside the region's widely despised political class, such as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Alejandro Toledo of Peru, confront widespread discontent over their inability to deliver swiftly on promises of change.

"This is not a rejection of democracy," said Horacio Verbitsky, a Buenos Aires-based political commentator. "Rather, you're seeing frustrated citizens demanding better representation, transparency and a higher quality of leadership."

"Democracy is supposed to mean that the people have a voice, and now, the people are using it to tell politicians that they need to do a better job," Verbitsky said.

In Argentina, where popular uprisings have led to the fall of two presidents since late December, those frustrations continue to boil over into violence.

Last week, Senator Eduardo Menem, brother of former President Carlos Menem, got into a brawl on an airplane after other passengers shouted insults at him. Five weeks ago, an angry mob attacked and burned down the home of a congresswoman in the province of Buenos Aires.

A former government minister was recently spit on and harassed by a crowd of 500 in a shopping mall; afterward, he shaved his beard to disguise himself. Supreme Court judges have had their homes egged and vandalized.

The attacks could represent a threat to the new administration of President Eduardo Duhalde. Politicians argue that the increasingly violent nature of these confrontations, along with almost daily protests, is fostering what some call a "lynching mentality" eroding the rule of law. It is also, officials say, robbing the new government of the support it needs to halt the nation's economic plunge.

"I understand their rage. The people feel as if we have failed them, and maybe they are right," said Caviglia, who is 40. "But if we're going to get out of this crisis, we need to restore faith in our institutions, not tear them down."

But citizens respond that the time has come to hold their leaders accountable for their failures and excesses, which many here say bear a large part of the blame for Argentina's painful economic collapse. Government waste and legislative perks remain a sore point. In the past decade, public spending on salaries, including those for scores of new political appointees, has soared 147 percent, to $9 billion a year. Although almost half of Argentines live on less than $2 a day, legislators make as much as $5,400 a month, enjoy $3,000 monthly travel budgets, receive gasoline and car insurance allotments of $1,200 a month, and have additional budgets for as many as seven staff members.

A Senate investigating committee recently found the government spent $1.5 million last year to maintain the Senate's fleet of 50 cars, more than enough to buy 50 new ones.

Former officials have been accused of bilking the national health care system for the aged for an estimated $1 billion and dozens of legislators have been accused of taking bribes from the failed administration of President Fernando de la Rua to approve a controversial labor reform law last year.

And although a number of politicians, judges and government ministers have been charged with corruption, they rarely face punishment.

A case in point was the arrest of former President Menem last year. He was briefly jailed on arms trafficking charges but was quickly ordered released by the Supreme Court, which is headed by one of his former law partners. Additionally, an electoral system in which people vote largely for parties rather than individual legislators has kept power concentrated in two traditional political machines, the nationalistic Peronist Party and center-left Radical Civic Union, thus encouraging deals struck between powerful politicians rather than open discussion.

The situation has fed public frustration, giving rise not only to the spontaneous attacks against politicians on the streets, but to organized protests by newly formed citizens groups in front of politicians' homes, here and around the country.

"If you ask why Argentines are harassing politicians, the answer is because in this country, it is the only way to make them pay for their arrogance," said Sergio Tobal, a real estate agent who helped organize a neighborhood assembly in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo Viejo. "We know they will never be punished by the courts. So the streets are being made unsafe for them. At least that way they will be prisoners in their own homes."

So far, the response from politicians has been mixed. Duhalde has proposed constitutional reforms that would reduce the number of legislators in Congress by 25 percent, cut their salaries and revamp the election system. He also has called for replacing judges on the unpopular Supreme Court and reducing their number.

Yet Duhalde's 2002 budget proposes a modest increase for congressional expenses. And last week, Duhalde quietly gave himself and other officials a 16 percent raise, to $3,000 a month.

One of the major obstacles to democratic reform, however, is that while Argentines seem to know what they do not want - the two traditional parties - they are less clear on what they would like instead. "People are looking for a magic solution, and that's always dangerous," said Congressman Juan Carlos Millet, who this month was forced to leave his favorite restaurant in his home province of Santa Fe after a group of patrons began banging on their glasses with spoons to protest his presence. "People are clamoring for traditional politicians to go, but what they get instead could be just as bad, or worse."

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