Carlos Menem, the former two-time Argentine president, withdrew Wednesday from the run-off presidential election to be held on Sunday. He thereby handed victory to Nestor Kirchner, a relative unknown from Menem's own Peronist party. A generous gesture? Rather, it was the opposite.
Menem was seeking to do as much harm as possible to his opponent. It was all part of Menem's never-say-die spirit and his willingness to sow confusion. For amid confusion, chaos, crisis and emergency lies political opportunity.
A country going nowhere, like a stationary bicycle, can wobble and fall. Then a new leader can hop on to the bicycle and take his chance. Make life difficult for Kirchner from the very beginning, scatter some nails in his path, stall him, block him, and -- who knows? -- another political comeback might be possible.
Once again, Menem was writing his own rules. This was perhaps the first presidential election victory by opinion poll. The polls showed Menem going down heavily. Rather than taking his case to the voters, Menem therefore rested his case.
Why? Menem is a sore loser and for him no defeat is final. For most of his political life, he has been what Americans would call a winner, and he has come up with victory even when it seemed impossible.
He won the 1989 election and persuaded the opposition Radicals to remove a constitutional barrier to re-election in order to be re-elected in 1995. Not even the two terms were enough. There can be little doubt that Menem explored the possibility of seeking yet another successive term. After all, British prime ministers can go on and on. There is an international precedent.
Menem was always very good at making the rules up as he went along. Sunday, however, he was about to lose playing the game for which he set the rules in the constitutional reform of 1994. He therefore decried the rules.
"Kirchner can have his 22 percent and I'll remain with the Argentine people," he said.
What Menem was referring to was the vote in the first round of the presidential election in which Kirchner came second to Menem, who took 24 percent of the vote. His implication was that in the only true test of electoral opinion, an election, he had won: he was the winner. And he was not going to give voters the chance to contradict that, as they seemed set to do.
Why play this game? In power and out, Menem has been engaged in a political war with his opponents -- mainly within the Peronist party. His chief enemy and rival is outgoing President Eduardo Duhalde, who, during Menem's presidential term in the 1990s, acted as a less than friendly counter-weight to the president from his power base as governor of the Province of Buenos Aires.
Duhalde ran for the presidency in 1999 against the Radical Fernando de la Rúa, lost, and looked like the big loser of Argentina politics. But he came back when De La Rúa's presidency collapsed under the weight of incessant recession.
Now Kirchner is from Duhalde's wing of the party. Kirchner's victory is a victory for Duhalde over Menem.
Menem, of course, is far from being the only one to blame. Duhalde blocked Menem's better initiatives of the 1990s before proving a far more responsible president than we might have expected. The opposition Radicals have been self-serving and corrupt, too.
And how has all this in-fighting served Argentina? The answer can be seen in the economic devastation of the country. Rich a century ago, it has been left behind by its rivals. The Argentine bicycle has gone down too often. Now Argentines may be poorer than they ever been.
Kirchner has a chance to bring change. With the currency that Duhalde wisely floated two years ago, Argentina's economy is more competitive than for a decade. Even in a weak world economy, the country could move forward.
But to do so requires qualities that Argentine leaders, and above all Menem, have failed to show. Respect for rules. Legitimacy. Honesty. A desire to put the country first, not yourself.
Instead it has often suited Argentina's leaders deliberately to jar the handlebars of the bicycle or jam a stick in its wheels, anything to topple the man in power -- and never mind that all Argentines suffer in the country's crash.
That was what Menem did Wednesday -- give the bicycle a nudge, even before Kirchner is in the saddle. It is unlikely to be Menem's last effort. How convenient if Argentina's wobbly bicycle could be made to crash again.
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