No Magical Solutions.

A casual visitor to Argentina might not realize that elections are looming. Voters are scheduled to go to the polls on April 27 to choose a new president--but such is the cynicism felt by ordinary Argentines about politicians that no candidate has emerged as a clear front runner. If anything, recent opinion surveys consistently find that the largest single category of voters--about a fifth--say they won't back anyone and will instead spoil their ballots or stay home in protest. "There's nobody to vote for," shrugs Jorge Cimillo, the owner of a lottery-ticket vending shop in Buenos Aires. "[The politicians] have mortgaged the country, and anyone with new ideas gets crushed."

That sense of sullen disenchantment is pervasive--and understandable. Argentina just staggered through its worst year of recession since the 1930s--in 2002 the economy shrank by more than 11 percent, the prices of basic goods soared by 75 percent and more than a quarter of the country's work force was unemployed--and yet no political leader has come up with a credible proposal to lead the country out of its mess. With Argentina lurching from one crisis to another, millions of voters were disgusted by an unseemly struggle last year between current president Eduardo Duhalde and former president Carlos Menem for control of the Peronist Party. Such self-indulgent machinations have only worsened the population's already poor opinion of their political rulers. The most popular political slogan in the country over the past year has been: "Throw them all out!"

Argentines know how to do that. When Duhalde was sworn in as caretaker president a year ago, he became the fifth man in less than two weeks to occupy that hot seat. Having declined to run for president this April, the veteran Peronist leader instead spent much of 2002 trying to sabotage the plans of his archrival, Menem, who hoped to become the populist party's candidate for president. In the end Duhalde got his way: the primary was canceled--and for the first time ever, no presidential hopeful will enter the balloting with the formal imprimatur of the Peronists. (Menem supporters are challenging this decision in the courts.) Perhaps the only prediction about the impending election that can be made with any certainty is that it will require two votes: with no candidate polling more than 16 percent in the latest surveys, a second-round runoff will almost certainly be required. The leading candidate, Peronist governor Nestor Kirchner, is a gray figure who, until recently, was largely unknown outside his tiny province of Santa Cruz. The crowded Peronist field also features Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, a maverick who lasted just a week as president in December (and then published three different memoirs of his time in office) and Menem, who more than half of Argentines say they wouldn't vote for under any circumstances after his scandal-ridden government of the 1990s.

The leadership confusion has obscured even the few bright spots that have surfaced in recent weeks. There is a growing sense among economists that the country has hit bottom and will get back on the road to recovery in 2003. A year of torturous negotiations with the International Monetary Fund finally yielded an agreement earlier this month to roll over $6.6 billion in debt that was falling due this year. But that accord came through only a couple of days after the Duhalde government defaulted once again, this time on a loan from the Inter- American Development Bank. Argentina's reputation among international ...