The news that Argentina's Eduardo Duhalde, an old-style populist from the Peronist party, has been elected by Congress to serve as the fifth president in two weeks is not reassuring.
The Peronist party will almost certainly carry on the tradition of keeping the people quiet at all costs by devaluing the currency further and spending more on public benefits, and not tell them the truth that, at the end of the day, the solution has to come from an enterprise culture and not one of dependency on the State. Of course, in the dire situation in which millions of Argentinians now find themselves, the government has got to supply a basic safety net. But, as in previous times, the Peronists will undoubtedly go further than that and will continue to buy off one interest group after another until inflation becomes rampant again. And it's likely to be far worse this time. A new military dictator seems almost certain to me with the possible re-emergence of the death squads and the disappearance of many young intellectuals. I don't know whether Carmen Lopez is still on FW List. If so, Carmen, please look after yourself and lie low. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
