Argentina's Carlos Menem grudgingly ends a quest for a third term as President, a move that is good for his country and the region

By TIM PADGETT

n the end, nothing in Carlos Saul Menem's two-term presidency of Argentina may have become him more than his promise to leave it. When he departs in December 1999, as the country's constitution provides, the wily, enigmatic Peronist leader who first took office on July 8, 1989, will be remembered for many things: whipping hyperinflation, modernizing the economy, restoring prosperity, dramatically changing a nationalistic foreign-policy stance and bringing Argentina back into the bosom of the West. But his handing over power to a democratically elected successor--contrary to what many analysts see as his powerful inclinations--will be the most extraordinary thing two terms of Menemism have done to bring Argentina back from civil and economic chaos. A third term might pose an insuperable challenge to the country's democratic institutions and set an unsettling example for the region.

Menem made it clear that he badly wanted a third term, and in this he was backed by a tight circle of loyalists in the Casa Rosada. There was a precedent: his second term came about only after his party, with widespread public support, orchestrated a constitutional amendment that allowed his 1995 re-election to proceed. The constitution still stood in Menem's way, and until last week he seemed intent on circumventing it again. Two weeks ago, a rump party convention called for a national plebiscite, a congressional amendment to the constitution or an appeal to Menem's handpicked Supreme Court to allow Menem a shot at a third mandate. The objective was a ruling in any of those arenas that would consider his 1995-99 term as the first under the constitution's new two-term limit, enacted just four years ago.

But this time almost nobody else was for such a move. Menem was openly opposed by the powerful Peronist Governor of Buenos Aires province, Eduardo Duhalde, and polls showed that ordinary Argentines were unenthusiastic. Last Tuesday, Menem suddenly changed direction and announced, "I have decided to exclude myself from any course of action that would allow me to run in 1999." His announcement was not exactly gracious: the following day he called Duhalde a "traitor" on national radio and said of his opponents, "I cannot continue throwing my honor to the dogs."

Menem's change of heart, said the Buenos Aires daily La Nacion, "marks the end of an absurd and irresponsible political adventure." Presidential supporters, such as Menem's widely respected Foreign Minister, Guido di Tella, were kinder. Menem, he said, simply "realized it was no longer convenient for the country, for the party, to continue." Either way, exulted Buenos Aires mayor Fernando de la Rua, a possible presidential candidate of the opposition Radical Party, "the constitution has been saved." Said political pollster Rosendo Fraga: "It's a victory of institutions over the old caudillo style of politics."

Menem's renunciation indeed met a litmus test for democracy and for Argentina's political maturity. After the dictatorships that plagued Latin America in the 19th century, "no re-election" had become a constitutional tenet of the region in the 20th century. But the collapse of civilian governments and the rise in the '60s and '70s of military regimes had shown that executive-term limits were not necessarily an antidote for dictatorship. As civilian government has returned in the 1990s, more and more Latin American countries have been turning to the two-term presidential model practiced in the U.S. Peru amended its constitution in 1993 to allow a second term; then came Argentina (1994) and Brazil (1997). Panama is holding a referendum on the issue next month, and others, like the Dominican Republic, are debating it.

Three terms is another matter entirely. But Peru's President, Alberto Fujimori, has nearly turned that corner. Fujimori was elected in 1990 and again in 1995, largely on the strength of an economic-recovery program and his defeat of guerrilla terrorism. Peru's constitution still sets a two-term presidential limit, but two years ago, Fujimori's compliant Congress came up with a novel interpretation of the amended charter: Fujimori could run for two extra terms since the amended measure was written during his first term of office.

The problem is that interpreting the constitution is supposed to be the judiciary's role. But in Peru, "when you have 75 of 120 votes in the Congress, you can do what you want," says Marcial Rubio, a law professor at Lima's Universidad Catolica. Especially when you also control the judiciary. Last year the Congress removed potentially troublesome judges from the Constitutional Tribunal and stacked the Supreme Court with a majority of friendly Justices, so Fujimori's view of the re-election amendment is unlikely to be overruled before elections in the year 2000. He has yet to say whether he'll run, partly because private polls show that only 1 in 5 voters backs him.

The regional unease created by Fujimori's maneuvering has deepened with the rise of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, currently the front runner prior to his country's December presidential election. As an army lieutenant colonel, Chavez led a failed, bloody military coup in 1992 against President Carlos Andres Perez. Chavez went to jail for two years but emerged with a streak of authoritarian populism intact. Venezuelans, embittered by years of feckless government and huge corruption scandals, find that political creed more attractive than ever before in the country's 40-year democratic history. "All in all, this is a very delicate moment for Latin America," says Riordan Roett, head of the Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

When Menem finishes his term, he will have tied the Argentine record for presidential longevity in this century, set by the Peronist strongman Juan Domingo Peron. After decades of turbulence inspired by Peronism, then a decade of calm led by the same party, the country seems more inclined to follow the lead of neighboring Chile in favoring democratic institutions over the men who occupy them. In 1993, Patricio Aylwin, the country's first elected civilian President after 17 years of dictatorship, flatly rejected the idea of a second term. As Aylwin expected, Chile did just fine without him.

Menem's term of office has 17 months to run, and quite a few Argentines think the President could change his mind yet again. Congressional opposition leader Graciela Fernandez Meijide of the left-of-center Frepaso coalition, another possible presidential candidate, has called Menem's decision merely a "tactical retreat." But Fernandez has acknowledged that if she were in Menem's position as President, she wouldn't back away from his hugely successful economic-modernization policies, which include sweeping privatization of industry. Grudging though his decision was, Menem perhaps realized last week that the measure of a chief of state isn't always being re-elected but being emulated.

--With Reporting by Catherine Elton /Lima and Uki Goni /Buenos Aires