The Curse of Menem-Mufa.

Michael McCaughan reports from Argentina.

When Argentina's president Carlos Saul Menem visited a new Toyota factory in Buenos Aires last April, workers wore red ribbons concealed beneath their work shirts to ward off bad luck. The event passed off without incident. A week later, Menem shook hands with racing driver Michael Schumacher, who promptly crashed out of the Buenos Aires Grand Prix.

The strange curse surrounding Carlos Menem first drew national attention in 1989 when world powerboat champion Danile Scioli invited the newly-inaugurated Menem to co-pilot his boat. An hour later the six-time world champion lost his arm. Soon after, Menem, a self-confessed "addict" of the rich and famous, played a game of tennis with Gabriela Sabatini, then rated 4th in the world. Sabatini lost form soon after, plummeted in the world rankings and abandoned the game. The pattern of misfortune was established in the public mind.

Nowadays most Argentinians refuse to even utter the president's name, calling him "Mendes" instead, or "mufa", meaning "one who brings bad luck". The nation has by turn been fascinated and fed up with their 'action-man' president, who pilots jets and drives his Ferrari at 200km per hour along Argentina's highways. When it comes to football however, Argentinians have drawn a clear line in the grass, forbidding him under pain of lengthy hissing and booing from attending his favourite team's games. When the national team played Cameroon in the last world cup, Menem greeted the players before the match, which they lost 2-1. In Bolivia last May, radio commentators waited to find out if Menem would attend before hazarding a guess on the outcome. Menem stayed away and Argentina won.

Menem called his opposition "mental dwarves," and simply rules by decree when he fails to push his radical neoliberal agenda through congress. An enthusiastic traveller, Menem told the German president that Argentina's economy was better qualified than most European countries to join the single currency club. Back in 1989, Menem pledged to fight privatisation and anti-labour laws then demanded by foreign investors. Since taking power Menem has implemented laws to outlaw strikes and limit union power. "If I told voters I planned to do that they would never have voted for me," conceded Menem in a recent interview.

"Menem is only half the fool he appears to be," cautioned Nicholas Tozer, political analyst at the Buenos Aires Herald. "He is a streetwise politician who knows when to attack and when to laugh at himself." When the military handed over power in 1983, Menem then cultivated the image of the tortured defender of democracy, imprisoned by the military junta yet capable of forgiving his tormentors, indeed offering them a full pardon. However, Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky broke the real story of Menem's imprisonment, largely house arrest with privileges including dinner at restaurants, trips to the cinema and other stern punishments. A fellow prisoner told Verbitsky that Menem "cried like a sissy" and dedicated his time to building friendships within the military. An enraged Menem told Argentinians not to read Verbitsky's paper, Pagina 12 and sued the journalist. The case was tossed out of court last December and Menem was ordered to pay costs.

The curse has found an echo within Menem's own family, particularly with his wife Zulema, who was forcibly evicted from the presidential home soon after Menem assumed the presidency, in an embarrassing televised scandal. Meanwhile, in a mysterious helicopter accident, Menem's son Carlos Jr. died in March 1995, fuelling the notion that Menem has a malevolent angel hovering overhead. Menem has ignored Zulema's ongoing demand for an investigation. After the death of his son, Menem himself became convinced that he was suffering some type of curse and sought a spiritual advisor, Blanca Curi, who practised a "spiritual cleansing" on the shaken president.

Menem's administration has suffered blow after blow, as opposition, church, press, unions and ordinary citizens unite to demand a reversal of the economic policies which have left 20% unemployment and a radical upward redistribution of wealth. Argentinians have found two antidotes to the Menem curse: the first, for men, is touch their left testicle and for women to touch their left breast.A more reliable antidote may well be the popular uprisings and highway blockades that spread through the country between April and June, reviving a popular movement that was murdered into silence during the period of military rule, a dark shadow which still hangs over Argentina's citizenry.