Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
AN INTERVIEW WITH
PRESIDENT CARLOS SAÚL MENEM,
OCTOBER 1989
Q.
Why are you encouraging market forces?
Menem's Answer. Economic stagnation! In the country of cows,
wheat, milk, and abundance, how can we have 9 million people out of
30 million living in poverty? It is a product of a policy that evidently has
been inadequate.
Q.
What are your aims?
A. Argentina is powerful in raw materials, food, energy, and human
resources. We must liberate these resources and open our doors so
foreign capital can help us grow.
Q.
Politically, critics say, you have only a few months to get results.
A. Some sectors, particularly workers, are facing difficult conditions.
But they are accepting it, except for certain groups that have not com-
prehended that Argentina has changed.
Q.
Your policies are likely to provoke strikes. How will you respond?
A. We are going to take measures to challenge the union leadership
in court. Those who don't work will be replaced by those who want to
work. Regrettably, we have to be tough.
Q.
How about industrialists who still demand subsidies?
A. Subsidies no longer exist. They will be as unprotected as pension-
ers, who will no longer travel on subways free if their pension is over
$170. The same goes for power workers who pay reduced electric
rates. These subsidies have disappeared forever.
Q.
What about Peronism's negative image abroad?
A.
(Looking annoyed)
We can't spend all day telling what Peronism
really is. Peronism is what is happening now in Argentina.
Q.
Who will buy the companies being privatized?
A. Whoever wants to. They are public tenders open to international
bidders.
Q.
You plan to allow private foreign ownership of oil assets. Is this a first
for Latin America?
A. I believe we are the first in Latin America to carry out something
as revolutionary as what we are doing with the Argentine state oil
company.
Source:
“A Talk with Carlos Menem.”
U.S. News & World Report,
November 27, 1989, 46.
