Eduardo Alberto Duhalde (born 5 October 1941) is an Argentine former politician who served as interim President of Argentina from January 2002 to May 2003. He also served as Vice President from 1989 to 1991 during the presidency of Carlos Menem and as Governor of Buenos Aires Province in the 1990s.
Born in Lomas de Zamora in Buenos Aires Province, he was elected for the local legislature and appointed intendente (mayor) in 1973. He was deposed during the 1976 coup d'état that began the National Reorganization Process, and elected again when democracy was restored in 1983. He was elected vice president of Argentina in 1989 as Carlos Menem's running mate for the Peronist Justicialist Party (PJ). As vice president, Duhalde was also President of the Senate, but Duhalde did not like the legislative work (especially as most day-to-day activities are carried by a provisional president, and the vice president presides mostly for special occasions) and preferred to work with the actual administration of a district. Menem suggested that he run for governor of the populous Buenos Aires Province (wanting to end the influence of the incumbent governor Antonio Cafiero, who ran agaist Menem in the 1989 Justicialist Party primaries), which Duhalde accepted on the condition of a great budget aid to the province. Duhalde was elected governor, ending the political influence of Cafiero.
Duhalde won a second term as governor, following a rather complicated series of events.note After the start of his second term, Duhalde began to publicly criticize Menem, stating that he should leave his government's neoliberal policies and return to the Peronist doctrines. As the new constitution allowed re-election a single time, the PJ started an internal discussion over the leadership of the party after the presidency of Menem. Duhalde announced his intentions to run for president in 1999 shortly after the 1995 elections, only increasing the fierce dispute with Menem. Menem promoted an advertisement campaign "Menem '99", despite the term limit, to avoid being considered a lame duck, and despite the PJ losing the 1997 midterm elections, Menem only intensified the "Menem '99" campaign before eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that his attempt to run for another presidential term was unconstitutional.
Duhalde ran for president in 1999 with governor of Tucumán (and popular singer) Ramón "Palito" Ortega as running mate, but was defeated by Fernando de la Rúa. However, de la Rúa would face an economic crisis culminating in the December 2001 riots, and resigned as a result that month. As his vice president had already resigned months before, Congress appointed governor of San Luis Province Adolfo Rodríguez Saá as president, but when Rodríguez Saá also resigned after his first administrative actions caused renewed protests and resulted in not even the PJ fully supporting him, Congress appointed Duhalde; this time, thanks to the Radical Civic Union (UCR) also supporting him unlike Rodríguez Saá, he was given the mandate to finish de la Rúa's term, unlike the mandate to call elections in March to fill the remainder of de la Rúa's term like Rodríguez Saá was given. During Duhalde's term in office, a huge currency devaluation and an increase of the exchange rate led to a gradual recovery, especially after appointing Roberto Lavagna as economy minister.
Aside from his economic policy, his presidency was almost entirely defined by his by now full-blown feud with Menem, who made it clear he wanted to run for a new term as president in the 2003 election, and Duhalde wanted to prevent it. To this purpose, he sought other candidates that could defeat him,note but after none of those negotiations bore fruit, he chose Néstor Kirchner, governor of Santa Cruz Province, despite his reservations: Kirchner, mostly unknown by the public, started fifth in the presidential polls, but Duhalde speculated that, although Menem had a large number of willing voters to begin with, he was also very unpopular, and thus while might have won in the first round, if the results called for a ballotage, most of the population would rally under any candidate with a chance to defeat him. Duhalde's plan eventually worked, if perhaps not in the way he imagined: Menem did indeed come first in the elections, with Kirchner second, but gave up running for a runoff, fearing that he would lose the second round, effectively handing over the presidency to Kirchner.
Kirchner soon distanced himself from Duhalde, however, resulting in political disputes through the following years (including the 2005 midterm elections featuring both Duhalde and Kirchner's wives running for the same Senate seat; Kirchner's won) that culminated in Duhalde running in the 2011 presidential elections, but after obtaining only 6% of the vote, he has been largely retired from politics since then.
Works featuring Duhalde:
Live-Action Television- He was one of the many Argentine politicians parodied in Argentine variety show VideoMatch.
Music
- He is indirectly mentioned as one of the Argentine presidents cited in Bersuit Vergarabat's "La argentinidad al palo", in the line "Cinco presidentes en una semana" ("Five presidents in a week"), as the period between de la Rúa's resignation and Duhalde being appointed president was known.note
