[This is a bit behind the news, but I think the background knowledge that Saa is about to resign even while this article is being written only makes it more interesting. John Mage has gone from being a voice in the wilderness to a voice in the center of town :o)]
Financial Times; Dec 31, 2001
THE AMERICAS & MIDDLE EAST: Government learns about people power: Argentina's emboldened middle classes are showing their mettle, report Thomas Catan and Mark Mulligan
By THOMAS CATAN and MARK MULLIGAN
If Adolfo Rodriguez Saa learned one thing at the weekend, it was that the newly emboldened middle classes of Argentina have no favourites in their campaign for clean government and financial stability - because the same people who poured on to the streets just over a week ago to demand the resignation of President Fernando de la Rua and his government were back out there early on Saturday morning to force a few changes in the new regime.
These are not the young, bare-chested agitators who covered the exterior of the presidential palace with graffiti before setting fire to parts of the national Congress.
They are generally well-groomed and peaceful, covering the whole demographic range from young housewives pushing prams to retired civil servants. They take to the streets banging pots and pans, holding up traffic and swelling in numbers as they proceed, as if following a pied piper, to the monuments of power in the stately capital.
Indebted in dollars but paid in pesos, they have more to lose from a devaluation than any other sector of the Argentine economy. The poor benefit from cheaper prices, while the rich hold all their important assets offshore.
Economists and analysts have long identified the middle classes as the sacrificial lambs of any viable solution to the worsening financial crisis. Recent estimates suggest 2,000 of them are disappearing into the ranks of the poor every day.
The Argentine middle class is obsessed with the image of its own demise. Countless plays and films are dedicated to the decay of middle- class families, where children turn to ever more nefarious activities as their parents turn a blind eye.
Art galleries in Buenos Aires have reported record attendances this year as the people strive to hang on the customs which have long identified them.
Walter Molano, economist at BCP Securities, said recently: "The situation in Argentina is ripe for a popular uprising, similar to Paris in 1792 and 1871 and Tehran in 1979. Argentina can no longer sustain its large middle class."
Eduardo Duhalde, senator and former Peronist presi dential candidate, warned at the weekend that Argentina was in danger of spiralling into civil war.
On Saturday, incensed by a Supreme Court ruling which upheld Dollars 1,000-a-month limits on bank withdrawals, thousands massed to vent their frustration.
More frightening for Mr Rodriguez Saa were calls for the resignation of Carlos Grosso, former mayor of Buenos Aires and - until Saturday - chief adviser to the increasingly beleagured interim president.
After Mr Grosso resigned, the entire cabinet offered the same sacrifice out of fear of future social unrest. The president's honeymoon, which started with all the elation and back-slapping that would normally accompany a landslide election, was over in less than a week.
The demonstrators were not just angry with the administration of the hapless Mr de la Rua, but remain fed up with a political class that rides around and around on the carousel of power regardless of whether they were effective in government.
Most politicians are perceived as corrupt and driven by self-interest. Placards on Saturday called for the imprisonment of Carlos Menem, who held the presidency for most of the 1990s and was recently cleared of charges linked to arms trafficking.
A humbled Mr Rodriguez Saa spent all weekend in crisis meetings, trying to stitch together a new cabinet while Peronist aides sweated over a viable economic plan. Late on Saturday he called a press conference to inform the people that the banks would stay open longer today.
The country remains braced for further unrest.
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