Alfonsin OKs Early Exit as Argentine President

In the face of a devastating economic crisis, President Raul Alfonsin agreed Sunday to move up the inauguration of his Peronist successor rather than stagger through a seven-month transition.

Leaders of Alfonsin’s incumbent Radical Civic Union and advisers to President-elect Carlos Saul Menem are negotiating legal changes so that Alfonsin’s term would conclude early, probably July 9--Argentina’s independence day--instead of Dec. 10 as scheduled, officials from the two parties said.

In a statement Sunday, Alfonsin did not mention a date, saying merely that negotiators from the two parties were working out a formal accord to allow Menem to assume office “in the near future.”

Early today, Radical party leaders said that the talks with the Peronists had not yet produced a date for the transfer of power. In a statement, they stressed that the party had not asked for the early transition, but wanted to show “maturity and patriotism” in coping with the crisis.

Bitter End

Handing over power prematurely would be a bitter end to Alfonsin’s term, which brought a consolidation of civil liberties in Argentina but also saw the onset of an economic nightmare that ensured Menem’s landslide victory May 14 over the Radicals’ candidate, Eduardo Cesar Angeloz.

The Radicals have seemed incapable of providing direction to the economy in recent weeks. Workers’ buying power has vanished in a cloud of inflation, and some consumer goods and medicines are scarce because suppliers cannot set realistic prices. Foreign lenders won’t provide fresh loans because the government is $3 billion in arrears on its $60-billion debt.

The crisis led the parties to agree to shorten the transition to calm the current chaos in financial markets stemming from uncertainty over the long interregnum. The dollar shot up by nearly 70% in the week since Menem’s victory, further fueling inflation expected to reach 50% for May alone.

The plan would require the provincial electoral colleges to meet quickly and designate Menem as president--a formality since he won a majority of electoral college votes--and to have Congress adopt a law changing the inauguration date. The electoral college had been scheduled to meet Aug. 10. Alfonsin thus would not formally be resigning but merely concluding a shortened term.

Alfonsin, 62, took office in 1983 after his own landslide victory following a seven-year military dictatorship. The constitutional transition from one elected president to another will be the first in Argentina in 61 years, and all parties are determined to maintain the constitutional order.

As recently as Friday, both Menem and Alfonsin insisted that the inauguration take place as scheduled Dec. 10.