Carlos Menem

Carlos Saúl Menem (2 July 1930 – 14 February 2021) was an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as the president of Argentina from 1989 to 1999.

Ideologically, he identified as a Peronist and supported economically liberal policies.

Carlos Saúl Menem was born on 2 July 1930 in Anillaco, a small town in the mountainous north of La Rioja Province, Argentina.

His parents, Saúl Menem and Mohibe Akil, were Syrian nationals from Yabroud who had emigrated to Argentina.

He attended elementary and high school in La Rioja, and joined a basketball team during his university studies.

He visited Buenos Aires in 1951 with the team, and met the president Juan Perón and his wife Eva Perón.

This influenced Menem to become a Peronist.

He studied law at the National University of Córdoba, graduating in 1955.

After President Juan Perón's overthrow in 1955, Menem was briefly incarcerated.

He later joined the successor to the Peronist Party, the Justicialist Party (Partido Justicialista) (PJ).

He led the party in his home province of La Rioja and was elected governor in 1973.

He was elected president of its La Rioja Province chapter in 1973.

In that capacity, he was included in the flight to Spain that brought Perón back to Argentina after his long exile.

According to the Peronist politician Juan Manuel Abal Medina, Menem played no special part in the event.

Menem was elected governor of La Rioja in 1973 when the proscription of Peronism was lifted.

He was deposed and detained during the 1976 Argentine coup d'état and was elected governor again in 1983.

He was deposed during the 1976 Argentine coup d'état that overthrew President Isabel Perón.

He was accused of corruption and having links with the guerrillas of the Dirty War.

He was detained on 25 March, kept for a week at a local barracks, and then moved to a temporary prison on the ship 33 Orientales in Buenos Aires.

He was detained alongside former ministers Antonio Cafiero, Jorge Taiana, Miguel Unamuno, José Deheza, and Pedro Arrighi, the unionists Jorge Triaca, Diego Ibáñez, and Lorenzo Miguel, the diplomat Jorge Vázquez, the journalist Osvaldo Papaleo, and the former president Raúl Lastiri.

He shared a cell with Pedro Eladio Vázquez, Juan Perón's personal physician.

Argentina re-established diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, suspended since the 1982 Falklands War, and developed special relations with the United States.

The country suffered two terrorist attacks.

He defeated the Buenos Aires governor Antonio Cafiero in the primary elections for the 1989 presidential elections.

Hyperinflation and riots forced outgoing president Raúl Alfonsín to resign early, shortening the presidential transition.

He led Argentina as president during the 1990s and implemented a free market liberalization.

He served as President of the Justicialist Party for thirteen years (from 1990 to 2001 and again from 2001 to 2003), and his political approach became known as Menemism.

Born in Anillaco to a Syrian family, Menem was raised as a Muslim, but later converted to Roman Catholicism to pursue a political career.

Menem became a Peronist during a visit to Buenos Aires.

Menem supported the Washington Consensus and tackled inflation with the Convertibility plan in 1991.

The plan was complemented by a series of privatizations and was initially a success.

The Peronist victory in the 1993 midterm elections allowed him to persuade Alfonsín (by then leader of the opposition party UCR) to sign the Pact of Olivos for the 1994 amendment of the Argentine Constitution.

This amendment allowed Menem to run for re-election in 1995, which he won.

A new economic crisis began, and the opposing parties formed a political coalition winning the 1997 midterm elections and the 1999 presidential election.

He was investigated on various criminal and corruption charges, including illegal arms trafficking (he was sentenced to seven years in prison), embezzlement of public funds (he was sentenced to 4 1⁄2 years to prison), extortion and bribery (in both of which he was declared innocent).

His position as senator earned him immunity from incarceration.

Menem ran for the presidency again in 2003, but faced with a likely defeat in a ballotage against Néstor Kirchner, he chose to pull out, effectively handing the presidency to Kirchner.

He was elected senator for La Rioja in 2005.

By the time he died in 2021 at age 90, he was the oldest living former Argentine president.

He is regarded as a polarizing figure in Argentina, mostly due to corruption and economic mismanagement throughout his presidency.