Bumping Bottom

The dour, dedicated man in Argentina's presidential Casa Rosada deliberately projected, soon after taking office last year, a period of intense personal unpopularity bound to stem from painful economic reforms. Last week Arturo Frondizi was bumping bottom--and still coolly determined to get on with his task.

A Frondizi decree cut the lunch period for government employees from an hour to 30 minutes, forced them to work a 9:30-5:30 shift, scrapping the six-hour day. "A danger to health!" cried the Union of Civil Servants, and public workers accustomed to holding second, private jobs, grumbled that the longer hours might force them to give up their government sinecures. That was fine with Frondizi, who hopes thereby to cut 1) the swollen civil service that comprises a third of the nation's workers, and 2) the government budget deficit of $108 million.

The election of twelve provincial legislators in wine-and petroleum-producing Mendoza a fortnight ago measured the fall of Frondizi's popularity: his party lost every seat that it had held. President Frondizi is booed in the newsreels, jeered at on public occasions, disliked by even a large portion of his own party. But he plunges grimly on: "A lowering of the standard of living of Argentines is inevitable during the next two years. It is impossible to continue consuming more than is produced."

The choice of this road is Frondizi's own. Elected with the support of Communists and Peronistas, hailed as a man of the left, this cold realist soon concluded that he had to put an end to the labor featherbedding, price subsidizing and other self-indulgences institutionalized by Demagogue Juan Peron. Item: per capita gross national product had remained stationary for four years. Item: though Argentina ranked ninth in the world in oil reserves, the inefficient, 37-year-old national oil monopoly forced it to spend $300 million annually to import petroleum and refined products.

Frondizi turned his back on his leftist past, turned toward economic orthodoxy. Today the improved climate for foreign investment has resulted in deals for $1.2 billion of new foreign capital, and the Communist and Peronista-run unions have been sharply curbed; e.g., out of 95 labor organizations, four operate under army orders, 13 are run by government interventors.

Frondizi's only dependable ally is the armed forces, and he takes care to cultivate them. Lieut. General Hector Solanas Pacheco, the War Minister, operates as the army's man in the Cabinet, and is rated as its most important member. Frondizi says he needs two years before the benefits of his reforms abate his unpopularity. He counts on force to secure those two years for him.

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