(ANSA) - BUENOS AIRES, 14 FEB - The former president and current Argentine coach Carlos Saul Menem died today in Buenos Aires at the age of 90.
The family made it known, stating that for some time he was hospitalized in a clinic for a urinary infection.
Born in Anillaco in the province of La Rioja on July 2, 1930, Menem, a member of the Justicialist Party founded by Juan Domingo Peron, was governor of his native province before being elected to the highest office of the state twice, in 1989 and 1995.
Not being able to apply directly to a third time per constitutional ban, he tried his luck a few years later and in 2003 was the most voted candidate in the first round of the presidential elections, but for the second round he preferred to retire in front of the challenger, also Peronist, Nestor Kirchner.
In 1989 he had come to power with an electoral campaign marked by a populist socio-economic program which, once he settled in the Casa Rosada, he abandoned to apply a neoliberal doctrine of economic management, mass conprivatization, cuts in public spending, and an anchoring of the weight to the dollar with parity 1-1.
Upon hearing the news, Argentine President Alberto Fernández today decreed three days of national mourning and, via Twitter, expressed his "deep condolences" for the disappearance of a man who "always elected in a democracy (...) was persecuted and imprisoned during the dictatorship".
(HANDLE).
