Adolfo Rodriguez Saa
Adolfo Rodríguez Saá (San Luis, July 25, 1947) is an Argentine lawyer and Peronist politician. As a prominent leader of the Justicialista Party (PJ), he served as governor of San Luis for five consecutive terms between 1983 and 2001, a position he left when he was elected by the Legislative Assembly as interim president of the Argentine Nation on December 23, 2001, after the resignation of Fernando de la Rúa in the context of the ongoing economic, political and social crisis. With little political and partisan support, Rodríguez Saá submitted his resignation just a week after taking office, on December 30. He was provisionally succeeded by Eduardo Camaño, president of the Chamber of Deputies, until Eduardo Duhalde was sworn in in January 2002. He was a candidate in the presidential elections of April 2003, ranking fourth. Subsequently, he was a representative (2003-2005) and a national senator (since 2005), in both cases representing the district of San Luis.
Rodríguez Saá and his brother, Alberto Rodríguez Saá, who was elected governor in 2003, have governed San Luis for the longest time since the restoration of democracy, and the other two intermediate governors (Alicia Lemme between 2001 and 2003, and Claudio Poggi between 2011 and 2015), adhered to his political line during their governorships. His provincial management has been constantly highlighted and particularly praised. Under the Rodríguez Saá government, San Luis received numerous decorations, both national and international, being classified as the best-managed province in the country by private consultants in terms of fiscal efficiency, social indicators, infrastructure, fiscal solvency, and foreign trade. His detractors have mainly focused their criticism on his prolonged stay in power, as well as denounced a reduction in judicial independence in the province, and have accused the Rodríguez Saá brothers of nepotism, corruption, and of supporting for decades a "dynastic" and "feudal regime". It has also been pointed out that he sports a lavish lifestyle, which has led to accusations of illicit enrichment. Rodríguez Saá would dismiss such criticisms as falsehoods, due to the impossibility of the opposition to criticize the performance of his administration.
After his short-lived presidency, Rodríguez Saá and his brother spoke out as opponents of the government of Néstor Kirchner within Peronism, identifying themselves within their own line, limited mostly to the San Luis district, which led to it being usually called "Modelo San Luis", whose political arms were the Unión y Libertad, Es Posible and Compromiso Federal parties. He was again a presidential candidate in the 2015 elections, finishing last with 1.64% of the votes and prevailing by very little in San Luis. In 2019, both brothers contested for the governorship of San Luis after a controversial confrontation between the two for the pro-government candidacy, since his brother intended to seek re-election, while he aspired for him to retire in his favor. Supported by most of the justicialismo, Alberto Rodríguez Saá obtained the victory, while Adolfo Rodríguez Saá was in third place (behind Pog gi, also distanced from the ruling party and supported by the government of Mauricio Macri) with 22.03%. After briefly expressing a rapprochement with the Macri government, he finally joined the presidential candidacy of Alberto Fernández, of the Frente de Todos, ending its dispute with Kirchnerism just over a week before the presidential election. After Fernández's electoral victory, Rodríguez Saá formally joined the legislative bloc of the pro-government Frente de Todos in the Senate.
Early Years
Adolfo Rodríguez Saá was born on July 25, 1947, in the city of San Luis, capital of the province of the same name. Descendant of an Argentine family, with distant Galician ancestors, Adolfo is the first son of Carlos Juan Rodríguez Saá and Lilia Esther Páez Montero, who had another son: Alberto Rodríguez Saá and three daughters, Rosario, María Elena and Zulema Rodríguez Saá. The Rodríguez Saá family has wielded considerable political power in the territory of what is now the province of San Luis for at least the last two centuries, originating in the rise of the Argentine state. They are descended from federal caudillo Juan Saá, and Carlos Juan Rodríguez, both intermittent governors in the 1860s. Rodríguez Saá's great-grandfather, Benigno Rodríguez Jurado, was also governor between 1904 and 1907. Rodríguez Jurado's three sons, including Adolfo Rodríguez Saá's grandfather (who wore his same name) and his two great-uncles were also governors: Adolfo Rodríguez Saá (1909-1913), Umberto Rodríguez Saá (1922), and Ricardo Rodríguez Saá (1934-1938), all belonging to to local conservatism, hegemonic in San Luis before the advent of Peronism in Argentine political life. On their great-grandmother's side, the Rodríguez Saá have ancestry from the Ranquel indigenous people, being direct descendants of the cacique Painé Nürü, who headed the Ranquel Ulmanate between 1836 and 1844.
Rodríguez Saá described his childhood as happy, stating that his family was "very close". Superior Master and Bachelor. Later he moved to Buenos Aires to begin his university studies. He graduated as a lawyer in 1971 at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires.
Early political career
Rodríguez Saá did not adhere to Peronism in his youth and his entry into said movement was late. Until 1969, during the time of the Prohibition of the Justicialista Party from Argentine political life and the exile of its leader, Juan Domingo Perón, Rodríguez Saá remained linked to the provincial and conservative Liberal Democratic Party (PDL), to which practically all his relatives then belonged, including those who had served as governor. In his adolescence he was editor of the provincial newspaper La Voz de San Luis, a publication that exhibited a markedly anti-Peronist tone. After his move to Buenos Aires and during his studies, however, both he and his brother Alberto finally began to lean towards Peronism, in which they would develop the entirety of their respective political careers. In 1971, at the age of twenty-four and after completing his degree, he returned to his province and became the legal representative of the San Luis Justicialista Party, which once again operated in the country with the democratic opening initiated by the Alejandro Agustín Lanusse regime. and that culminated in the elections of March 1973.
In the 1973 provincial elections, Rodríguez Saá headed the list of deputies of the Justicialist Liberation Front (FREJULI), representing the Peronist Youth within it, and being elected for the period 1973-1977. He took office on May 25 of the same year, while the justicialist candidate Elías Adre was sworn in as governor for the same period, and Héctor José Cámpora assumed the presidency of the Nation. At twenty-six years of age, Rodríguez Saá presided over the legislative block of the Justicialismo in the San Luis legislature. However, on September 28, 1973, he distanced himself from that bloc after the murder of the unionist José Ignacio Rucci, setting up a dissident Peronist bloc of six deputies, which he also presided over. The block was made up, in addition to Rodríguez Saá, by María Aurora Morán de Cortes Aparicio, Jorge Niño Tomás Dante Ferrara, Mateo Abdon Peñaloza, José María Roca and Víctor Manuel Novillo. From this sector, Rodríguez Saá maintained a strong dispute with Adre within the Justicialismo, accusing him of committing what they considered an "ideological deviation". The Peronism that responded to Adre set up a separate bloc, made up of the other nine FREJULI deputies, and chaired by Rodolfo Garciarena. At the legislative level, both Justicialist blocs in the provincial chamber ignored each other, claimed to be the only real Peronist bloc, and paralyzed most legislation for the remainder of the term. Orlando Britos, party president in San Luis, and Rodríguez Saá, as legal representative, took legal control and practically factual control of San Luis' Justicialismo, despite the fact that Adre was the governor. Despite the numerous calls for federal intervention, this never materialized, and the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón remained close to that of Adre, despite the ideological differences.
The estrangement and subsequent open confrontation of Rodríguez Saá with the Adre government reached a climax and led to a political and media scandal at the end of 1975. On October 5 of that year, the Montoneros guerrilla organization had taken Formosa International Airport, to later capture the Monte Infantry Regiment No. 29, which ended in a massacre with twenty-nine casualties between guerrillas and the military. Peronist to a meeting that same night at the party headquarters in the capital. The nominal purpose of the meeting was to coordinate actions between the various factions and begin preparations for the impending 30th anniversary celebration on October 17, the following day. The following day, October 14, the media announced that Adre would participate in the Internal Security Council that had convened the provincial governors days before. Simultaneously, Britos, Rodríguez Saá and others sent a joint telegram to Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla (later de facto president). In it, they asked the armed forces to not only fight the guerrillas, but also their alleged accomplices in government institutions, among whom they located Adre and the former police chief of the capital. On October 16, Adre testified before the media that it would collaborate with the army for effective action against the guerrillas, which was seen as a sign that the army took the telegram seriously. The complaint was made public through the provincial newspaper Los Andes, in the neighboring province of Mendoza, and on October 17, Adre finally responded with a media statement condemning the statements.
On October 25, the CGT and the 62 Organizations published a petition alluding to both Britos and Rodríguez Saá, accusing the latter of coming from "the most rancid liberalism" and having "turned around" to join Peronism and occupy an undeserved position. Facing the internal elections of the San Luis Justicialismo, which took place at the end of February 1976, an easy victory was pointed out for the Adre sector and the normalization of Peronism in the province around its figure. However, Adre denounced during the elections that Rodríguez Saá and Britos intended to orchestrate electoral fraud against him. On March 3, 1976, the national Justicialista leadership ruled in favor of Adre and the PJ of San Luis intervened, putting an end to the division. Adre was finally recognized as a leader of Peronism in San Luis. However, just three weeks later, on March 24, 1976, there was a military coup led by Videla, which overthrew the government of Martínez de Perón and installed a military dictatorship calling itself the National Reorganization Process. The coup led to federal intervention in the province and all elected officials were deposed.
During the dictatorship
After the coup, all political activity was once again banned, and Rodríguez Saá kept a low profile, opening a law firm with his brother Alberto in the city of San Luis. Some time later, a scandal would break out when a document signed, among other people, by Alberto Rodríguez Saá, which was sent to Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, a member of the Military Junta, and in which an "exemplary punishment" was requested for "subversives" linked to to the politics of San Luis; he was the object of media scrutiny in the context of the trials that were taking place against former repressors. Although he himself did not sign the document, the name of Rodríguez Saá appeared on it, and the telegram sent to Videla in 1975 was also cited as evidence that the Rodríguez Saá would have collaborated with the dictatorship. Both denied any link to the military regime.
Government of San Luis (1983-2001)
First term (1983-1987)
1983 Elections
With the collapse of the dictatorship in 1982 after the Malvinas War and the call for elections, Rodríguez Saá quickly became leader of the Justicialista Party in San Luis, then only thirty-six years old, and was elected candidate for the party to the governorship of San Luis. While a large number of political parties contested the elections at the national level, in San Luis there were only four candidates for governor, and Rodríguez Saá had to face tough competition against three weighty candidates, his main contender being the radical Carlos Zavala. The Integration and Development Movement (MID) nominated former governor Alberto Domeniconi, and the Federal Alliance, made up of the Provincial Popular Movement (MPP) and the Liberal Democratic Party (PDL), presented Joaquín Tula Durán.
Originally at a disadvantage, Rodríguez Saá quickly benefited during the last stretch of the campaign due to the differences between the two candidates regarding their party situation. Zavala did not belong to any of the majority currents of the Radical Civic Union (the National Line and the Movement for Renewal and Change), but to the minority Yrigoyenista Affirmation Movement, of a leftist tendency, and his candidacy weakened radicalism (strengthened at the national level), in the province, as numerous radical leaders refused to support him. Similarly, his socially liberal and secularist political stances in a province with a markedly conservative population provoked a strong reaction. Days before the elections, the Bishop of San Luis, Juan Rodolfo Laise, publicly supported Rodríguez Saá and called to vote for him to avoid the victory of Zavala, whom he considered "anticlerical".
The presidential, legislative and provincial elections took place on Sunday, October 30, 1983. The radical presidential candidate Raúl Alfonsín defeated the Peronist Ítalo Lúder by a wide margin, obtaining a victory in San Luis by a margin of more than seven points. However, at the provincial level, Rodríguez Saá achieved a narrow victory over Zavala with 40.48% of the votes against the 37.27% obtained by the radical candidate. Domeniconi obtained 14.69% and Tula Durán the remaining 7.56%, losing a large part of their electoral wealth but receiving a good result with respect to that of the national forces they represented. The Justicialista Party also obtained a narrow absolute majority in the provincial legislature, with 17 seats against 12 for the Radical Civic Union and one for the MID. Rodríguez Saá's victory was essentially due to the ballot cut against Zavala, whose votes largely went to Domeniconi (who obtained almost four times the number of votes than his presidential candidate, Rogelio Julio Frigerio), since by himself the justicialist candidate in turn suffered a ballot cut, although lower, receiving 1,246 fewer votes than Lúder.
Despite the PJ's governmental victory, at the municipal level radicalism emerged strengthened, and the two main cities of the province, the provincial capital and Villa Mercedes, which together accounted for 80% of the total population of San Luis, were left under the control of radical mayors, respectively Juan Bautista Picco and Miguel Ángel Bonino.
The elected officials took office on December 10, 1983, beginning the longest period of democratic constitutionality in Argentine history.
Government Summary
At the time Rodríguez Saá assumed the governorship, San Luis was considered an economically stagnant province, with an economy dedicated to low-intensity primary agricultural activity. Also, with 214,416 inhabitants according to the 1980 census, it was the sixth province least populated in the country, representing only 0.77% of the Argentine population and, with 147,100 registered voters, 0.82% of the national electoral roll. Rodríguez Saá had led a populist campaign, but at the same time with various liberal and developmental overtones. He promised to build more than 5,000 homes, bring electricity to the entire south of the province, and build an aqueduct. Although at the time the viability of these works was questioned by the opposition media, which accused the new government of issuing empty promises and satirically nicknamed Rodríguez Saá as "El Hornero" who "builds houses with his pick", eventually most of these would come to fruition. Under the protection of the Industrial Promotion Law No. 22,021, promulgated in 1979 and that sought to promote the industrial development of the provinces of San Luis, La Rioja and Catamarca, there was the arrival of considerable investments, which originated a notable industrial growth. The fiscal resources were to a large extent destined to a growing public work.
Since then, the province exhibited employment, schooling, income per inhabitant and citizen security rates markedly higher than the national average, which led to the administration of Rodríguez Saá being praised both nationally and internationally. From 1984, the province's treasury ended its deficit, and at the beginning of the following decade, it would begin to have a fiscal surplus. On March 30, 1987, Rodríguez Saá was distinguished as "Governor of the Year" by the International Distinctions Committee of the World Organization of Nations, an award that he shared with the radical president of Córdoba, Eduardo Angeloz.
To a large extent due to partisan and ideological differences with the radical government of Raúl Alfonsín, the political scene during Rodríguez Saá's first term was conflictive, at the same time as a strong crisis took place within the Justicialista Party (PJ). in all levels, unleashed after the national defeat. The consolidation of the power of Rodríguez Saá in San Luis Peronism, unlike the stability achieved by other leaders such as the Saadi family in Catamarca or by Carlos Menem in La Rioja, was more difficult. On Sunday, November 3, 1985, legislative elections took place throughout the country and also at the provincial level to renew half of the seats in the provincial legislature. With radicalism strengthened by the Trial of the Juntas, and Peronism weakened by the confrontation between the renovating sector and the orthodox sector, the PJ suffered a strong setback. In San Luis, the UCR won two of the three national deputies in dispute and pro-Rodríguez Saá pro-government candidacies were defeated by an even greater margin, with 49.08% of the votes and 9 deputies for the UCR against 45.50% and 6 deputies for the PJ. In this way, the legislature was left with 16 radical deputies against 14 justicialistas.
Constitutional reform
Days after the electoral defeat, Rodríguez Saá vetoed the approval of the electoral result in the legislature, arguing that one of the deputies elected by the radicalismo was retired due to disability. The immediate response of radicalism was to request federal intervention and even suggest a possible political trial against the governor, which seemed highly feasible given the crisis of power suffered by Rodríguez Saá. However, a few days later, the governor agreed with the UCR undo the veto in exchange for a constitutional reform that would facilitate re-election, until then prohibited by the provincial constitution. The reform enabled re-election for the governor's position indefinitely, but as a counterpart, the creation of new institutions was enshrined, such as the Council of the Magistracy and the Jury of Judgment, responsible for the appointment and removal of judges, respectively, which sought to increase judicial independence in a context in which the majority of rulings were favorable to the government. The constitutional reform It also motivated the creation of a Provincial Senate, with one senator per department, which for many years ños would remain composed solely of members of Justicialismo.
Second term (1987-1991)
1987 Elections
Ahead of the next provincial elections, Rodríguez Saá emerged as the clear favorite, after his success in achieving constitutional reform despite facing a hostile legislature. However, he faced internal competition from senator Oraldo Britos, who had previously been his ally in the 1970s. aligned with the renewal sector. After Rodríguez Saá easily obtained the candidacy of the Justicialista Party, supported by other political formations, Britos presented himself as a separate candidate for the minority Renewal Front. The candidate of the radicalismo was Jorge Alfredo Agúndez. Despite the fact that Rodríguez Saá had signed the same compromising telegrams and documents as Britos, the ruling party's negative campaign against him focused on highlighting his role during the military dictatorship. Finally, greatly favored by the popularity of his management and With the crisis suffered by the national government, Rodríguez Saá obtained a resounding re-election, with 52.13% of the votes against 32.87% for Agúndez and only 7.24% for Britos. The PJ recovered the majority in the Chamber of Deputies, which was expanded to 43 members, with 24 seats against 18 for Radicalism and one for the Renewal Front. In the same way, it triumphed in all departments, securing the 9 seats in the nascent Provincial Senate. Rodríguez Saá assumed his second term on December 10.
Advent of Menemism
On January 22, 1988, just over a month after assuming his second term, Rodríguez Saá signed the Nuevo Cuyo Economic Integration Treaty, together with the governors Carlos Enrique Gómez Centurión of San Juan, José Octavio Bordón of Mendoza, and Carlos Menem from La Rioja. The creation of the "Nuevo Cuyo" corresponded to the argument of integrating the three provinces of the original Cuyo Region (Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luis), and adhere to La Rioja, which culturally and historically belonged to the extreme north. Rodríguez Saá's main reasons for staying out of the national justicialist internal were his initial intention to profile himself at the national level as a possible presidential candidate. However, in the end, in the 1988 primary elections, the winning pre-candidate was the governor of La Rioja, Menem, who defeated Antonio Cafiero by a comfortable margin. After not having been able to present his candidacy, Rodríguez Saá and his brother called for abstention, which caused an overwhelming victory for Menem in the province.
After the internal one, the different factions of Justicialism reunited for the elections and agreed to set up a united Peronist bloc in Congress. After a series of negotiations, Alberto Rodríguez Saá, then a senator, took over as president of the Justicialist bloc, largely sponsored by Britos. The 1989 presidential elections were brought forward by the Alfonsín government to May 14, in view of the serious economic situation, which reached a maximum point of tension with the outbreak of severe hyperinflation in February of the same year. The Rodríguez Saá government unified the legislative renewal elections with the presidential ones, obtaining victory over the radical candidates. Menem was in turn elected president for the period from 1989 to 1995. Despite showing himself to be an internal opponent of Menem and maintaining a relatively distant relationship with the president after his victory, Rodríguez Saá strongly supported the economic policies of the Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo.
Third term (1991-1995)
1991 Elections
Benefited by the favorable economic climate and with the province on the verge of achieving a fiscal surplus, Rodríguez Saá ran for a third consecutive term. Together with Eduardo Angeloz from Córdoba, they were the only governors elected in 1983 who were still in office and who would seek a second re-election. On this occasion, the Justicialismo obtained a comfortable victory with 51.78% of the votes against the 36.95% achieved by the Radical Civic Union and 6.59% by the Political and Social Front coalition. The PJ also retained its majority in the Chamber of Deputies and all the seats in the Senate. Strengthened by his electoral triumph, Rodríguez Saá hoped to acquire more power within the national justicialismo, and aspired to finally contest the presidential candidacy facing to 1995.
Accusations of personality cult
A few months after assuming his third term, in March 1992, the image of Rodríguez Saá was shaken by a scandal when it was made public that the government of San Luis had decreed the compulsory use of a book in schools in the province of text that contained seventeen photos of the governor, as well as three of Juan Domingo Perón and two of President Carlos Menem, named "San Luis, his men, his history and his culture". The book would contain laudatory slogans towards the figure of the governor, being the most prominent by the media: "The governor gladly accepted the challenge of making the province great and his people happy". Some parents and The province's teacher unions denounced this as an attempt to politically indoctrinate students, and the controversy was published in the national media, which led to the figure of Rodríguez Saá becoming more publicly known at the national level. al, despite the fact that he had already been in the governorship for more than eight years. On March 8, Rodríguez Saá organized a press conference in the neighboring province of Mendoza, where he stated that he did not agree with the mandatory nature of the texts and that it would be withdrawn. The governor ruled out that it was indoctrination and affirmed that: «the people of San Luis are a cultured people, who trained thousands and thousands of teachers who went out to teach culture throughout the Argentine Republic, and therefore has the power to discern texts from stories»
Alleged kidnapping
On October 25, 1993, Rodríguez Saá publicly denounced having been kidnapped and blackmailed four days earlier. According to the first version released by the governor, he was taken by surprise in his car on the night of October 21, while he was traveling alone and without custody on the highway of the provincial capital, by a group of people in two vehicles, who reduced him, locked him in the luggage rack of one of them, and transferred him to El Trapiche, a tourist town in the center of the province. There he was supposedly taken to a temporary shelter called "Y... no C" and later to the house of one of his captors, where he was subjected to numerous physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. Rodríguez Saá affirmed that, threatened with weapons, he was forced to undress and perform various erotic poses with various women while being recorded and photographed by a camera. Baking soda sachets were thrown at him that were simulated to be cocaine, alcoholic beverages were uncovered, and a dildo was inserted into his chest. anal rectum. The governor was finally released at dawn on October 22, abandoned in the center of the city with a note in his pocket demanding payment of USD 3.0 million in a period of no more than ten days. If the money is not delivered, supposedly the pornographic film would be exposed to the entire country, or the erotic photographs would be delivered to provincial opposition leaders. Rodríguez Saá was treated by a doctor at the vo I return to his home in the early hours of the morning, suffering from a fissure in the nasal septum and a bruise on his left eye.
On October 24, Rodríguez Saá decided to make the situation public and took a flight to Buenos Aires, where he had a private meeting with President Carlos Menem. The following day, he issued a statement to the media explaining what happened, stating that he had been "harassed", and declaring: "They took me out of the trunk and put me in a room where I was subjected to filming, photographs to link me to the drugs, violence, sex and homosexuality". The national government's reaction to Rodríguez Saá's complaint was largely skeptical. Menem himself stated that the governor's account had many "dark areas," while Interior Minister Carlos Ruckauf, stated that the matter was "serious" and that a thorough investigation of the facts would be carried out. In the following days, Rodríguez Saá repudiated Menem's statements and accused the national government of having deliberately ignored him during a denunciation of a previous kidnapping attempt, which would have occurred two months earlier, and he was irritated by the lack of repudiation of the class. politics before what happened.
While an intense debate was taking place at the national level over the imminent attempt by the Menem government to achieve a constitutional reform that would enable his presidential re-election, the controversy over the denounced kidnapping of Rodríguez Saá gained momentum in the media. The journalist Fanny Mandelbaum was sent to El Trapiche by Telefé Noticias to cover the case. During it, it was published that Rodríguez Saá was not in his car at the time of the kidnapping, but was already in the "Y....no C" with Esther Sesín, nicknamed "La Turca", a well-known local journalist who supposedly had been the governor's lover for eight years. The scandal surrounding the affair increased the media coverage of the events, with numerous journalists reaching out to the province in the following weeks. Finally, after having denied it during his first version, at the time of testifying in court, Rodríguez Saá confessed his affair with Sesín, and admitted that he was with her in the temporary shelter on the night of the 21st October, supposedly being there where the kidnapping took place and its transfer to the residence of Alejandro Salgado (another lover of Sesín), who would be one of the captors and who was arrested as the main suspect on that day s after the complaint.
In the first days of November, there were up to ten detainees suspected of having participated in the kidnapping, while the main suspects were Sesín, Salgado, his father Walter Salgado (father of the former and owner of the residence where the filming), Eduardo Doyhenard, and government employees Evelia Pérez Nicotra and Mariadel Carmen Alonso, who would be friends of Sesín. The San Luis government accused Sesín of having handed Rodríguez Saá over to his captors, while the journalist declared that he was kidnapped along with the governor, and Salgado ruled out having been part of the kidnapping, arguing that it was Sesín herself who told him the facts. Sesín affirmed that she was forced to perform erotic positions in the same way as the governor, and that they forced her to perform oral sex on him while they were recorded. Salgado later declared that during his arrest he was subjected to police torture, and his lawyers denounced that he had the dolls swollen and a damaged testicle after being assaulted once detained. Salgado's defense also challenged the judge in charge of the case, Raúl Fourcade, for being Rodríguez Saá's childhood friend. In December, Rodríguez Saá gave an interview television, in which he stated that the province had been the victim of a "political operation", and that both he and his government were recovering from the events.
Despite the alleged threats from the kidnappers and the fact that the million-dollar payment was never made, the pornographic video or the photographs were never published, and their existence was questioned. handle four different versions of the events. The first was that of Rodríguez Saá himself, who initially stated that he had been kidnapped alone (and later confessed to having previously been in the temporary shelter) and that the case could have political connotations. The second was from the national government, which stated that the case was due to "passionate issues" and not political issues, although Menem admitted that the governor had been "badly hit." The main suspect, Salgado, declared that Rodríguez Saá and his lover were kidnapped, but that he had nothing to do with the crime, and that the provincial government was seeking to incriminate him. For its part, the Secretary of State Intelligence (SIDE), handled through an alleged report the theory that there was no kidnapping, and that Rodríguez Saá created the story as a screen to whitewash the alleged filming of a real orgy in which he participated. Despite the protests of the defense of the defendants, and some isolated requests for the resignation of the governor, this did not take place, and Menem rejected the idea of a federal intervention in the province, affirming that the conditions for such action were not given, and that the matter should be left in the hands of the San Luis provincial justice system. Finally, the versions of Sesís and Salgado were dismissed, and both were convicted. However, they would later agree to parole, and would not return to prison. San Luis province after his liberation.
Rodríguez Saá later referred to the episode as the "darkest and most difficult moment of his personal life", denouncing the insensitivity of the press at the time, which sought to portray the matter as a sexual scandal to harm him, and that although it did not managed to do lasting damage to his political career, it constituted "enormous suffering".
Conventional Constituent of 1994
Practically since the middle of his term, Menem had repeatedly stated that he would look for a way to run for re-election, despite being prohibited by the 1853 constitution. Both Rodríguez Saá and his brother, Alberto, were firm opponents within Justicialismo to the idea of Menem running for a second term. As Menem's intentions to achieve constitutional reform became more evident in 1993, friction between the national and provincial governments increased. Numerous media outlets speculated on the possibility that the Menem government had something to do with the kidnapping of Rodríguez Saá in October of that year, as a measure of pressure or retaliation for his refusal to support his re-election, a position that some time later the Alberto Rodríguez Saá himself would support it. Finally, Menem reached an agreement with the leader of radicalism, former president Alfonsín, known as the Olivos Pact, by which The Argentine constitutional reform of 1994 was agreed upon. Alberto Rodríguez Saá voted against the reform in the Senate, and resigned from his bench later. In the constituent convention elections, which took place in April 1994, Rodríguez Saá led the justicialista list, obtaining this 52.78% of the votes and thus forming part of the Constituent Convention that drafted the new magna carta.
Fourth term (1995-1999)
1995 Elections
After announcing his intention to run for a fourth term, Rodríguez Saá contested internal elections within the San Luis Justicialista Party for the gubernatorial candidacy, this time with Mario Merlo as running mate, the second time he was running for re-election with a different lieutenant governor. It had no internal rivals in the race and the Celeste Nuevo San Luis list, which postulated the Rodríguez Saá-Merlo formula, obtained 100.00% of the votes in the primary held on March 6, in a calm atmosphere due to the lack of of competence. By then, Rodríguez Saá's fourth consecutive term as governor was an unprecedented event in Argentina, and he was the only governor elected in 1983 who would continue in office at the end of the term. His fourth candidacy was supported, outside the PJ, by other minor parties, setting up a & # 34; Justicialista Front & # 34; with the Integration and Development Movement (MID), the Popular Conservative Party (PCP), the Provincial Popular Movement (MPP) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD). The elections took place on Sunday, May 14. In parallel with the broad re-election of Menem, Rodríguez Saá obtained a resounding victory with 71.62% of the votes, prevailing in all departments, against 17.00% of the radical candidate, 10.51% of the Solidarity Country Front (FREPASO), and 0.87% of the Frente Grande (FG) alliance. The Justicialist coalition retained its two-thirds majority in the legislature with 27 of the 41 deputies and all the senators. Participation was 80.22% of the registered electorate.
Conflict with the judiciary
During 1996 and early 1997, a series of executive and legislative movements began that triggered a crisis between the Rodríguez Saá government and the provincial judiciary. Since 1993, a reduction in judicial independence had begun, strengthened with the 1987 reform, with some modifications in the operation of the Council of the Magistracy. Law 5,047 removed control over professional registration from the Bar Association. Another legislation, Law 5,062, considerably reduced the real salaries of magistrates, which sparked accusations of an executive attempt to control judges financially. Later, the government modified the appointment of judges of the Superior Court of Justice so that They were appointed by the governor in agreement with the Provincial Senate, which was made up entirely of members of his political force. Rodríguez Saá declared the expiration of the mandate of the judges in office and appointed new ones in 1996, many of them linked to provincial Justicialism.
The situation led to a judicial strike between December 1996 and March 1997, which left the population without administration of Justice for more than four months. The Diario de la República, major media outlet of the provincial ruling party, blamed the judges for the crisis, accusing them of "having privileges and not accepting the reduction of their salaries to the detriment of the population", and exhibited a photomontage showing the five members of the Superior Court in clothing interior and with police caps. Four of its members resigned in the midst of the crisis, denouncing "submission", and were replaced by others appointed by the Senate. The slowness of the process led to the fact that the new judiciary was not constituted until July 1997. The new president of the Supreme Court, also in charge of the Jury of Jury, was Carlos Sargnese, who had been a provincial government official and considered himself closely linked to Rodríguez Saá. Alleging the need for an economic emergency, the ruling party approved new legislation, which transferred jurisdiction over the payment of salaries to the judiciary, releasing the provincial state from the obligation to financially support the judiciary, which was denounced as an attempt to suffocate economics.
Opposition figures denounced that the government of Rodríguez Saá intended to put an end to judicial independence, with the aim of preventing investigations into possible acts of corruption. On February 21, 1997, the UCR filed a petition of impeachment against Rodríguez Saá in the legislature, alleging: "poor performance in his duties, illicit enrichment, incompatible negotiations, violation of the Constitution and mental incapacity." It was quickly dismissed by a two-thirds majority of Justicialism.The charges of illicit enrichment focused on the inconsistencies between the economic situation of Rodríguez Saá according to his sworn statement before assuming the governorship and the one that the government of he. According to the accusations, he went from owning a house and two used cars to owning two homes valued at more than one million pesos, two apartments in the north of Buenos Aires, and commercial shares in various companies.
On February 18, 1999, during an interview while his possible presidential candidacy was being considered, Rodríguez Saá denied that the judiciary in San Luis was dependent, and stated that it was going "through a modernization process", questioning what the he called a "bad image" that was being given of his mandate.
Presidential candidacy of 1999
Rodríguez Saá focused his fourth term on strengthening his national political position. In 1995, he became vice president of the National Justicialista Council. Along with other governors of small provinces, he founded the Federal Solidarity Front (FFS), which sought to counterbalance Menemism and in turn prevent the growing advance of the coalition between FREPASO and the UCR in the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education. He sought to present his presidential candidacy for the Justicialista Party for 1999, initiating an open confrontation with Menemism. He was fiercely opposed to the possibility of a third Menem nomination, as well as the candidacy of Buenos Aires governor Eduardo Duhalde, whom he considered to be in collusion with Menem. In February 1999, he declared that he would not accept being a candidate for vice president and that his candidacy had not been concocted by the Menem government, two rumors that had been raised from the Duhalde sector. In the same interview, he announced that his colleague formula would be a non-partisan, and that "would cause surprise", and he was willing to form a broad front between the justicialismo and other political parties to confront the Alliance. Rodríguez Saá focused his campaign proposals on the "entrance to the New Millennium", and promised to find a way for the entire population to have access to the Internet and take advantage of it.
On March 15, he formally launched his candidacy for the inmates under the space Argentina Grande. On May 27, he confirmed that his running mate would be Jorge Asís, Argentina's ambassador to Portugal. Despite his fiery speech and noisy campaign, which came to include the creation of a web page for this purpose, Rodríguez Saá finally withdrew his candidacy in favor of Duhalde on June 7, 1999.
Fifth term (1999-2001)
1999 Elections
During the internal bid of the justicialismo for the presidential candidacy, in April 1999, Rodríguez Saá had declared that, if he was not a presidential candidate, he would not be a candidate for governor that year either. However, after withdrawing his candidacy, he announced that he would run again for a fifth term. Due to his dispute with Duhalde, and the precarious situation of the national justicialismo with the growing popularity of the radical candidate of the Alliance, Fernando de la Rúa, The government delayed the provincial elections from the national ones, for the first time since the democratic restoration. With the growing distance from most of the Justicialist leadership, neither Menem nor Duhalde visited the province during the campaign, which remained almost strictly provincial. Rodríguez Saá focused on highlighting the promotion of public works and the economic transformation achieved here with the establishment of companies, which was later considered one of the main reasons for his victory.
The Alliance nominated the radical Walter Ceballos as its candidate, while only the extremely minority Movement for Dignity and Independence (MODIN) presented a candidate outside the bipartisanship, which generated an extremely polarized election. However, the Alliance's chances were considered slim and in fact it was rumored that the Union and Freedom Party (PUL), which Alberto Rodríguez Saá had founded in 1997 as support for San Luis' Justicialism, was discussing possible links and rapprochements with the Alliance after of his expected presidential victory. Rodríguez Saá's candidate for lieutenant governor was María Alicia Lemme, who belonged to the PUL. During a visit to the province, De la Rúa did not give too clear support to Ceballos and declared "our candidates have a lot of enthusiasm", a support considered "warm".
The elections took place on September 12, one month before the presidential election. Both Ceballos and Rodríguez Saá attributed the victory to the closing of the elections, and the traditional celebrations that the Justicialism held in the provincial capital after the victory did not materialize, which produced a state of tension in the province. Ceballos denounced that Rodríguez Saá tried to falsify the results and refused to recognize his victory immediately. The Electoral Board announced, however, a new victory for Rodríguez Saá, only notably reduced compared to the previous one, with 54.32% of the votes against 44.99% of Ceballos and 0.69% of MODIN. The Alliance obtained a wide victory in the provincial capital, obtaining in this way the seat of the department in the Senate, the first opposition senate since the creation of the body.
Social conflict and accusations of corruption
The last mandate of Rodríguez Saá in the governorship of San Luis was characterized by an increasingly strong open conflict with the opposition, which increased the social conflict in the province in accordance with the growing political and social crisis at the national level, which it would worsen during the following years. His opponent in the elections, Walter Ceballos, was appointed by President Fernando de la Rúa as Secretary of the Nation's Provinces. In the same way, the ruling party had lost control of the city of San Luis, which was left in the hands of the dissident Peronist Carlos Ponce, elected by the Alianza. In June 2000, after it was revealed that his Minister of Social Action, Eduardo Sánchez, had diverted 18,000 pesos to a personal account, the governor requested the resignation of practically his entire cabinet. In September 2000, Rodríguez Saá announced a project to divide the capital district into four municipalities, which was denounced by the opposition as a massive district manipulation that sought to recover control of the city for the PJ. The Provincial Senate unanimously approved the project on September 5, which sparked massive protests in the capital, with five hundred people blocking National Route 7. The route was It was cut off for four days, until on September 8 the provincial police forcibly evicted the protesters. Rodríguez Saá denounced an organized maneuver for Caballos, Ponce, and the Bishop of San Luis, Juan Laise, to destabilize the province, and declared: "We are going to dialogue, to act with all the restraint and prudence that has always characterized my government."
In November 2000, Rodríguez Saá was accused of corruption when a recording was released in which Gustavo Cerioni, a member of the National Secretariat for Small and Medium Enterprises, the Minister of Industry, Silvio Closa, and the notary public of the The government of San Luis, Rafael Echenique, directly pointed to the governor as responsible for undue use of the provincial industrial promotion regime. This law allowed the establishment of more than eighty companies in the province, whose main benefit was to be exempt from paying the value added tax and income tax. The report, published by Channel 13, was titled "Rodríguez S.A." and it was carried out by journalists from the channel, who presented themselves as supposedly interested in the purchase of a firm in San Luis and filmed local officials with hidden cameras. Faced with the difficult situation, the provincial government launched an advertising campaign that sought to restore the Rodríguez Saá's popularity, worn out after seventeen years in power and punctuated by the violent rebellion in the capital and allegations of corruption. This campaign had as its slogan "San Luis Somos Todos", and was characterized by being the brand of many products and programs formulated by the government. The project had considerable success in stabilizing the province, and the San Luis Somos Todos brand would continue to be used by the San Luis ruling party for many years.
Presidency of the Argentine Nation (2001)
Election and swearing in
The government of Rodríguez Saá in San Luis came to an end with the crisis of December 2001, which led to the end of the government of the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education. The crisis was unleashed by the establishment of the Corralito, a government provision that restricted the extraction of cash from banks, designed by the Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo, and by the imposition of the state of siege by a decree of radical president Fernando de la Rúa on December 19, which ultimately sparked a widespread popular rebellion, ending with de la Rúa's resignation the following day.
The resignation immediately triggered the assumption of the justicialist Ramón Puerta, provisional president of the Senate, as interim head of executive power, by application of the law of acephalia. With the country suffering a ferocious institutional collapse, Puerta convened the Assembly Legislative Assembly to elect a new president, which took place on December 22. De la Rúa's resignation sparked a power struggle in the Justicialista Party, with radicalism as the arbiter, since Peronism enjoyed a majority parliamentary after the October elections, in which a large portion of the electorate cast blank or annulled votes. Rodríguez Saá had summoned the Peronist governors, members of the Solidarity Federal Front, to attend the inauguration of an airport in the city of Merlo, but the social outbreak and De la Rúa's departure from power changed the panorama, and he ended up extending the invitation to the fourteen justicialist governors, to the heads of legislative blocs, and the provisional head of state, to resolve the course that Justicialism would take to face the transition. The meeting was held at the Chumamaya Country Club, and in addition to Rodríguez Saá, it was attended by José Manuel de la Sota (Córdoba), Carlos Reutemann (Santa Fe), Néstor Kirchner (Santa Cruz), Juan Carlos Romero (Salta), Carlos Manfredotti (Tierra del Fuego), Rubén Marín (La Pampa), and Senator Eduardo Menem on behalf of Ángel Maza (La Rioja). The bad weather prevented the attendance of Eduardo Duhalde and the Buenos Aires governor Carlos Ruckauf, as well as Eduardo Fellner from Jujuy.
The meeting was largely secret. On the same day, it was only revealed to the media that it had not yet been agreed who would be interim president, and it was even considered for a time the ratification of Puerta in the executive branch until the called for new elections and held an internship of the Justicialista Party in January to choose a unity candidate. Rodríguez Saá told the media that he was proposing himself as president "until 2003" (when De la Rúa's term ended). De la Sota rejected this position, affirming that it was necessary to urgently call elections. Puerta declared the following day that he would only hold the position until the Legislative Assembly appointed another person, since he rejected the idea of occupying a position for which there had not been been elected. After a new meeting, finally, Rodríguez Saá was considered the leader closest to the postulates of the majority of the party spectrum, and in this way it was agreed to invest him as president of the Argentine Nation. Rodríguez Saá showed "certain euphoria" when agreeing to take over the leadership of the country, and affirmed that he would form a transitional government that would not devalue the currency, and would maintain the controversial Convertibility Law (which guaranteed parity between the Argentine peso and the US dollar, considered the main impulse of the crisis) and the system known as Corralito, at least momentarily, which sparked protests from a journalist present, who accused him of he only wanted to be equal to De la Rúa.
At 9:20 a.m. on December 23, Rodríguez Saá was elected president by 169 votes in favor and 138 against. He had the support of Puerta, a former ally of his while he was governor of Misiones in the 1990s 1990 and a member of the Federal Solidarity Front, as well as the nominal support of governors Ruckauf, Reutemann, De la Sota, Kirchner and Marín, all with presidential aspirations who preferred an early election. Rodríguez Saá was formally sworn in as president at 11:42 hours of the same day. The election of Rodríguez Saá would only be for sixty to ninety days, and early presidential elections must be held on Sunday, March 3, 2002, through the application of the controversial system of double simultaneous voting or law of slogans, until then employed only in some districts for the election of provincial offices, and on April 5 he had to hand over his position to the new president. On December 24 his term as governor ceased ovincial, assuming the lieutenant governor María Alicia Lemme, who remained in office until the end of the mandate in 2003.
According to numerous sources, the ratification of Rodríguez Saá was far from assured, even at the time of the vote, and numerous sectors of Peronism or radicalism and Frepasism threatened at the last minute to withdraw their support. The high number of votes against his candidacy was largely due to the rejection of the early elections, since the majority of these legislators wanted the interim president to complete De la Rúa's term. Similarly, the application of the The slogan system, which was not finally implemented, sparked a legal and constitutional debate during the week in which Rodríguez Saá temporarily held the presidency. In his inaugural speech, the new president promised to govern "for the most humble and what they suffer", that in his government "the people, not the foreign debt" would have priority, and announced the definitive break of Peronism with the policies of Menemism, declaring the suspension sion of foreign debt payments with private creditors, a move that was later criticized as "populist".
Conformation of the government
Rodríguez Saá practically did not negotiate with any of the justicialismo factions the design of an extremely small transitional cabinet (with four ministers and six secretaries), which was largely made up of people trusted by the president, highlighting his former political mentor and later provincial opponent, Oraldo Britos, as Minister of Labor. However, he also tried to incorporate figures from the other internal lines of the PJ, although without being able to satisfy the majority of the leaders. His Chief of Staff was Jorge Obeid, former governor of Santa Fe, and José María Vernet, also former president of that province, simultaneously held the portfolios of Defense and Foreign Relations, International Trade and Worship. Rodolfo Gabrielli from Mendoza was his Minister of the Interior. Four of his six secretaries were from San Luis who had held positions during his governorship: Carlos Sergnese, president of the province's Supreme Court, accused multiple times of biasing the San Luis judiciary in favor of Rodríguez Saá, was appointed as Secretary of Intelligence; Luis Lusquiños, his former private secretary, took care of the General Secretariat of the Presidency; José Guillermo L'Huiller was Legal and Technical Secretary; Alberto Zuppi, Secretary of Justice and Legislative Affairs, and Graciela Corvalán, Secretary of Public Works. None of the ministers outside the "San Luis Model" (that is, not directly linked to the former governor) had been explicitly appointed by the faction of the Justicialismo that they represented, but that Rodríguez Saá, with the collaboration of his brother Alberto Rodríguez Saá, had personally chosen the cabinet figures within the different spaces of Peronism. Rodolfo Frigeri, Secretary of the Treasury, Finance and Public Revenue, was summoned by Néstor Kirchner, despite belonging to the Duhalde sector, at the request of Rodríguez Sáa; while Daniel Scioli, then an adherent of Menemism, was summoned as Secretary of Tourism without having been consulted Menem, then president of the PJ, who was quickly marginalized both from the transition and the Legislative Assembly after the fall of De la Rúa and from the subsequent armed interim government. Due to the way in which Rodríguez Saá configured the new cabinet, a source from the same told the media that "everyone is for him, even if they are not his". There were no officials linked to De la Sota.
Economic projections
Rodríguez Saa's presidency lasted only seven days, so practically none of his projections came to fruition. During that period he proclaimed the suspension of payments on the foreign debt with private creditors, which he never achieved. Next, he announced the entry into circulation of a new non-convertible currency, called "Argentino", with which he would finance housing plans and give more than 100,000 subsidies, as well as an increase to retirees and state. Said coin never materialized.
Through his negotiation he managed to reunite the CGT, which earned him the support of the union leaders, but not that of the UIA (Argentine Industrial Union) or that of an important sector of the Justicialista Party, dissatisfied with the president's decision to devalue the currency gradually, and not immediately ―as the industrialists and Grupo Clarín proposed―. He appointed Senator Jorge Capitanich as Minister of Infrastructure and Housing and interim Minister of Economy, Social Development and Environment, Health, Work, Employment and Training of Human Resources and Social Security; and as president of the Banco de la Nación Argentina to David Expósito, an economist and journalist who became notorious in those days for his statements about the new currency, the "Argentine", which led to Rodríguez Saá demanding his resignation.
Debate for the length of his term and resignation
From the beginning, the main debate surrounding the interim presidency that emerged from the Legislative Assembly was its duration. While one sector promoted that the president appointed by the legislature complete De la Rúa's term on December 10, 2003, another sector, made up of governors of the most populated provinces (such as Ruckauf from Buenos Aires, De la Sota from Cordoba, and Reutemann from Santa Fe), argued for the need to call early presidential elections for Sunday, March 3, 2002, alleging that only a president ratified by popular vote would have sufficient legitimacy to face the economic crisis and stabilize the situation. The idea of using the system of double simultaneous voting (or law of slogans) for said election arose from the problem that it represented for Justicialismo to choose a consensus candidate that would unify the party in a period of time as short as three months. The motto law allowed the presence of several candidacies or sublemmas by the same party or motto, with the votes of the different sublemmas overlapping the motto. In this way, the winning submotto within the most voted motto would be elected.
The slogans law was automatically rejected by almost the entire opposition to the PJ (radicalism and Frepasism) and even numerous Peronist leaders questioned the advisability of using it in presidential elections. Both Duhalde and Ruckauf welcomed the announcement of its possible installation with coldness, believing that the only thing that said law would achieve would be to atomize the Justicialista vote and, at the same time, further undermine the legitimacy of the president who is elected, because due to the fact that the candidate The winner would be the one who obtained the most votes within a certain theme, this might not necessarily be the candidate with the most votes, and even if it were, it would surely be by an extremely low margin of votes. In addition, the constitutionality of said system applied to presidential elections, since it is not provided for by the national constitution, was the subject of a deep debate, and ultimately the use of this method was rejected. Rodríguez Saá, although he maintained an ambivalent position regarding the use of the motto law, did not speak out against its implementation and was willing to accept it.
Despite having initially accepted the short duration of his internship, Rodríguez Saá from the beginning demonstrated his intention to remain in power, either by running in early elections (although he had promised not to do so) or by completing the term of De la Rua. A sector of his cabinet confessed to the media that Rodríguez Saá intended to stay "up to six years". The idea was categorically rejected by more than half of the justicialist governors, who also criticized the "not very virtuous" composition of their cabinet, and demanded the departure of "unpresentable" figures, including the head of Banco Nación, Expósito, and the chief of Cabinet Advisors, Carlos Grosso. The absence of mention of the presidential elections was also questioned, reaching to suggest within the government that there was not enough budget to pay for them, and that the interim had to be prolonged. about to be invaded by protesters, who demanded resignations and the end of the corralito. Faced with this situation, the entire cabinet submitted their resignation. Rodríguez Saá confirmed and In his charges only his general secretary Lusquiños, and the Minister of the Interior Gabrielli. He simultaneously announced that he had agreed with the bankers that on December 30 the entities would remain open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and that they would pay a thousand pesos to retirees and state employees.
On December 29, Rodríguez Saá called a meeting of the fourteen justicialist governors at the Chapadmalal Presidential Residence to seek an understanding that would allow him to continue in the presidency, now without the possibility of preventing early elections. However, By then, the majority of the PJ had already withdrawn their support, and only six governors attended the meeting (Carlos Ruckauf from Buenos Aires, Ángel Maza from La Rioja, Gildo Insfrán from Formosa, Juan Carlos Romero from Salta, the missionary Carlos Rovira and his successor in the governorship of San Luis, María Alicia Lemme). Néstor Kirchner did not attend, but he sent his lieutenant governor, Sergio Acevedo, and Ramón Puerta was also present. Five other governors left silently without responding to his invitation, while José Manuel de la Sota told him clearly not to count on him. At the time of the failed meeting, there was a power cut that left the Chapadmalal building without electricity, so the meeting was barely illuminated by sunlight coming through the window. In the same way, there were massive protests outside and the custody of the president was not present. According to some comments made by those present at said meeting, Rodríguez Saá was aggressive and affirmed "having changed the country" in the only seven days that he had been in government, demanding the support of the governors to continue with his management or that, otherwise, they would look for "another De la Rúa".
While the meeting was taking place, Colonel Gustavo Bohn, then head of presidential custody, entered the room and informed Rodríguez Saá that a crowd of protesters was gathering outside the building and that they were trying to force the door while more and more people came. Bohn assured that the president's safety "could not be guaranteed." residence. Ruckauf, who left shortly after by helicopter, stated that the president's reaction to learning of the demonstration was "exaggerated". Duhalde, who went up to the first floor with him, would later comment that, after learning of a possible imminent town over Chapadmalal, Rodríguez Saá suffered a panic attack, locked himself on the first floor and lay down on a bed in a fetal position, claiming they wanted to assassinate him. According to Ruckauf's account, the head of his custodial staff informed him that there were only a maximum of ten people outside, not a demonstration, and that they were actually unaware that the president was there. at the complex, as they were hotel workers who wanted to speak with Scioli, then Secretary of Tourism. In any case, Rodríguez Saá, supposedly after recovering from the panic attack, withdrew without checking.
The car carrying Adolfo Rodríguez Saá left the Chapadmalal complex through the back door, where no one was present, and took him to the Mar del Plata Airport, where the presidential plane in charge of taking him to San Luis was waiting for him. Once there, he gave a press conference in which he presented his indeclinable resignation to the presidency, which became effective at 11:09 p.m. on December 30. Rodríguez Saá defended his short period in office and accused multiple leaders, pointing out De la Sota in particular, as responsible for the failure of his mandate, affirming that they had put party interests before the well-being of the country. Ramón Puerta had also absented himself so as not to assume ownership of the executive power again, for which reason this fell to Eduardo Camaño, president of the Chamber of Deputies, until the Legislative Assembly elected Duhalde as president, holding office until May 2003.
Cabinet
 Adolfo Rodríguez Saá | ||
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio | Owner | Period |
| Chief of Cabinet of Ministers | Jorge Obeid | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of the Interior | Rodolfo Gabrielli | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship | José María Vernet | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of Defence | José María Vernet | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of Labour | Oraldo Britos | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
Adolfo Rodríguez Saá | ||
| Portfolio | Owner | Period |
| General Secretariat | Luis Lusquiños | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Legal and Technical Secretariat | Guillermo L'Huiller | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Intelligence Secretariat | Carlos Sergnese | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Sedronar | Lorenzo Cortese | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of Finance, Finance and Public Income | Rodolfo Frigeri | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
| Ministry of Justice and Legislative Affairs | Alberto Zuppi | 23 December 2001 - 30 December 2001 |
Post-Presidency
Return to San Luis and 2003 presidential candidacy
Rodríguez Saá remained in San Luis after his resignation. On January 27, he caused controversy after publicly insinuating the possibility of unilaterally declaring San Luis as an independent territory, with the argument of "ceasing to solve the Nation's deficit." According to spokesmen close to the former governor and former president., San Luis did not have to "pay for the party of an inefficient national State", since it was the only province that "can exhibit zero deficit, fiscal surplus, an economic growth plan, without debts and with the maximum rating granted by the World Bank (AAA)".
Rodríguez Saá was convinced to participate in the 2003 presidential elections as a Justicialismo candidate, a candidacy that was finally made possible by the PJ's decision to allow candidates to run without having to win in the internal party, as if they were candidates from different parties. The former president launched his campaign on August 30, 2002, with a populist speech. He promised to investigate the debt process during the Duhalde government, stating that this was "the biggest deal" in Argentine history, "Argentines have the right to know how much we owe, to whom we owe, why we owe and how much is in this of legality and illegality"., which sparked bipartisan bidding to demand the disaffiliation of both if they ran together. Rodríguez Saá declared that "no one is going to take away my Peronism or Posse's radicalism" for legal reasons. Although he described the situation as "unusual", Duhalde declared that he did not believe there was a problem in the fact that Rodríguez Saá's running mate was non-partisan. On the other hand, Posse was expelled from Buenos Aires radicalism after he accepted the candidacy, considering that he violated party statutes.
The 2003 presidential elections took place early on Sunday, April 27. Carlos Menem, postulated by the Loyalty Front, was the candidate with the most votes with 24.45% of the votes, followed by Néstor Kirchner with 22.25% and Ricardo López Murphy, from a faction that emerged from radicalism called Recrear para Growth, obtained 16.37%. Affected by his confrontation with Grupo Clarín due to his economic positions, which caused a media repercussion against him, Rodríguez Saá, who had previously had a highly favorable voting intention, obtained only 14.11% of the votes., ranking fourth and surpassing Elisa Carrió by only 12,884, the fifth most voted candidate with 14.05%. The Peronism linked to Rodríguez Saá almost unanimously retained the province of San Luis, with Alberto Rodríguez Saá as candidate, receiving 90.08% of the votes, and the presidential candidacy won in the entire Cuyo region (San Luis, San John, and Mendoza). Facing the second round between Menem and Kirchner, Rodríguez Saá agreed to meet with Menem, considering the possibility of giving him his support. However, in the end, he remained almost neutral, although on April 30 he hinted that "by the logic of political change in Argentina, Néstor Kirchner should be the next president", giving his implicit support to the candidate., the second round was not held due to the withdrawal of Menem, with all the polls predicting a crushing defeat.
National Deputy (2003-2005)
On November 23, 2003, San Luis held elections to renew two seats in the Chamber of Deputies. Rodríguez Saá was its first candidate, with the outgoing governor María Alicia Lemme occupying second place. The list "Popular Movement Front" obtained a resounding victory, with 71.11% of the votes, and both Rodríguez Saá and Lemme were elected, being sworn in on December 10, 2005. Neither of them completed their four-year term: Rodríguez Saá resigned on December 10, 2005 to take office as national senator, and Lemme on August 15, 2007 to present himself as a candidate to mayor of San Luis.
National Senator for San Luis (since 2005)
Parliamentary work
Facing the midterm legislative elections of 2005, Rodríguez Saá was the first candidate for national senator, with Liliana Negre de Alonso as second candidate, within the Justicialista Front, postulated as opposition to the ruling Front for Victory at the national level. On October 23, 2005, Rodríguez Saá was elected senator by the majority with 62.90% of the votes, both he and Negre de Alonso entering the upper house, while the FpV came in second place with Daniel Pérsico agreeing to minority banking. He assumed his mandate on December 10, 2005, abandoning his bench in the Chamber of Deputies for that purpose.
As a national senator, he has promoted different initiatives to put an end to what he calls "superpowers", and what he perceived as a customary legislative delegation in the hands of the executive branch. Likewise, he presented various projects for the implementation of public policies for human and productive development, such as plans for social and digital inclusion and the promotion of cattle farming. In turn, the call for the formulation of a new federal co-participation law stands out, in which emphasis was placed on the correct distribution to the provinces of the ATN, the co-participation of the tax on bank credits and debits (known as « check tax") and full recognition of the autonomy enshrined in the National Constitution to the City of Buenos Aires. On social issues, he maintained a conservative attitude, which contrasted with the more progressive profile of the government administration headed by his brother, Alberto Rodríguez Saá, as governor (2003-2011, and 2015-2023). He was opposed to same-sex marriage, but did not vote against it, but during the debate on said law on July 15, 2010, he withdrew from the venue, avoiding voting and facilitating, along with other senators, the sanction of the law. by a few votes. She also opposed the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, and contributed with her vote to the rejection of the bill in the upper house on August 8, 2018.
Member of Parliament of Mercosur
At the end of 2006, the National Senate appointed Rodríguez Saá as a member of the Mercosur Parliament, to occupy one of the seats that correspond to the Argentine Republic in that body. In this area, the Argentine delegation appointed him in 2008 as one of the three members of the External Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat). He represented the Mercosur Parliament at the Climate Change Summit (COP 15), which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009. His most important contribution has been his project to create the Mercosur Court of Justice. The acceptance by Parliament of the need to establish the Court has been reflected in the Political Agreement for the Consolidation of the Mercosur Parliament, approved in Asunción on April 29, 2009, ratified by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the four States that make up the bloc, in October 2010.
Failed candidacy for governor of Buenos Aires in 2011
In 2011, he announced that he would be a pre-candidate for governor by Federal Compromise of the province of Buenos Aires, having to compete in the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory elections (PASO) to be able to move on to the general elections. His candidacy was questioned due to his residence in another province and the fact that he was also running for re-election as a national senator for San Luis. On August 9, 2011, the Electoral Board of the province of Buenos Aires decided to exclude him from the elections, arguing that his candidacy had received challenges due to his double candidacy in two different provinces. On the other hand, he also did not comply with the provisions of article 121 of the Buenos Aires Provincial Constitution, which requires proof of five years of residence in the Buenos Aires district if he is not a native of it. After appealing the sentence, the federal judge with electoral competence of the province of Buenos Aires, Manuel Blanco considered that it would be "impossible to comply" given "the advancedness of the electoral schedule" (the primary elections were on August 14, 2011), for which reason the candidacy of Adolfo Rodríguez Saá it became effective and participated in the primary elections. Finally, on September 21 and having already passed the primary elections, the Electoral Board ratified the invalidity of the candidacy since it was not possible to prove his residence in Buenos Aires territory. In this way, although he reached 1.5% of the votes in the primaries to run in the general elections (with 5.26% of the votes), he was disqualified from doing so. He obtained, however, a broad re-election as senator for San Luis, with 60.70% of the votes.
2015 presidential bid
After discussing the possibility that the Peronism of San Luis, led by the Rodríguez Saá brothers, would adhere to an electoral front that included Sergio Massa's Frente Renovador (FR), Compromiso Federal announced on May 14, 2015 the Adolfo Rodríguez Saá's presidential candidacy. Liliana Negre de Alonso, also from San Luis, was his running mate. The candidacy contested the primary elections in August, in which it obtained 1.99% and was the last formula to pass the threshold required to access the general elections, triumphing by a surprisingly low margin of votes in San Luis. October presidential elections, he was in sixth and last place, with 1.64% of the votes, and he triumphed in San Luis by only six points against the candidate Mauricio Macri (Cambiemos), with 36.83%. In the second Back, between Macri and the pro-government candidate Daniel Scioli (Front for Victory), Rodríguez Saá was neutral, although he gave a very slight implicit support to Macri by stating that "the country can be governed by a party that is not Peronist." In the second round, Macri obtained an overwhelming victory in San Luis, of 64.13%.
Dispute with Alberto Rodríguez Saá
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