ARGENTINA:The country is now enjoying Asian-style growth rates, writes Tom Henniganin Buenos Aires
Five years ago this week Argentina seemed on the verge of imploding. A deepening three- year recession sparked food riots which escalated into pitched battles with police right in front of the presidential palace.
Fernando de la Rúa, its weak-willed and isolated occupant, resigned and fled in his helicopter.
With more than 20 people dead in the chaos, the middle classes took to the streets banging pots and pans, demanding of the country's political class "que se vayan todos" (that all of them quit).
For a while the politicians seemed willing to oblige. Three presidents quickly followed de la Rúa out of the palace, one just staying long enough to declare the biggest debt default in history. Meanwhile people's bank accounts were frozen and the currency devalued, slashing billions off the value of the people's savings.
As the economy shrank by more than 10 per cent in the next 12 months, unemployment rocketed and more than half the population of what had been South America's most developed nation sank below the poverty line.
But today, just five years on, Argentina is on the up.
The economy has rebounded with Asian-style growth rates of more than 8 per cent in each of the last four years, boosted by demand for commodities such as soy beans.
Local industry has been re-energised by the peso's devaluation, which left imports expensive and exports cheap.
Property prices are galloping ahead and foreign currency- packing tourists are arriving in unprecedented numbers.
This has all helped to push unemployment down from nearly 25 per cent of the population at the height of the crisis to about 10 per cent today. Poverty rates have tumbled below 30 per cent.
Last year the government bullied foreign creditors holding its bonds into accepting a whopping 65 per cent loss on their investments. Where money once bled out of the country in interest payments, Argentina now sits on more than $30 billion in reserves.
In part this turnaround has been down to factors over which Argentina has no control, such as Chinese demand boosting global commodity prices and one that it resisted to the bitter last - devaluation.
But part of the credit goes to Argentina's president Néstor Kirchner.
An obscure political outsider elevated to the presidency almost by default in 2003, he has defied predictions he would be hostage to the unscrupulous barons that dominate his Peronist party and has aggressively set about restoring presidential authority.
He has done this mainly by picking a series of quarrels with, among others, his party leader and predecessor, who elevated him to the presidency, the country's former military rulers and the IMF. Each time he has won and emerged strengthened.
Almost four years into his term his poll ratings remain close to 70 per cent.
"Kirchner presents himself as a fighter for Argentina," says Analía Del Franco, director of Buenos Aires polling firm Analogías. "He works hard and portrays himself as a man of action who's on top of things. He's not a good public speaker, but he looks like an ordinary member of the Argentine middle class and people respond to this."
This popularity makes him the hot favourite to win re-election next October. In fact, the main debate is not whether he will win or not but rather whether he will run or instead step down and back his wife Cristina - a powerful senator in her own right.
Whichever Kirchner runs they will face an opposition divided into factions that have proved unable to combine or organise throughout the country.
Kirchner has taken advantage of this, picking off various groupings and adding them to his ruling coalition.
"From the very beginning Kirchner has tried to build a very heterogeneous coalition," says Sergio Berensztein, one of the country's leading political analysts. "He is a catch-all president, adding fragments from the old political system from both left and right to his coalition."
The president has been able to do this because he is cash-rich.
Changes agreed at the height of the crisis saw the setting aside of larger chunks of the tax take as discretionary spending in the hands of the president, which Kirchner has used to build up support for his administration.
"He blatantly buys politicians' support," is how Berensztein puts it.
This accumulation of presidential power has come at the expense of necessary reforms, says Nicolás Ducoté, head of CIPPEC, a leading local think-tank.
"Kirchner has done much better than most people at home and abroad care to admit, but deserves criticism because he has not dared to carry out some of the necessary constitutional reforms during what are good years.
"Instead he has allowed the political parties to be weakened; allowed other institutions, particularly congress, to be weakened; allowed provincial governments to be weakened.
"This is all convenient for his own political project, but does not build towards the long-term sustainability of our political system."
In all this some see the authoritarian tendencies that fit in with older Peronist traditions. "Kirchner is reminiscent of the early Perón," argues Dr Samuel Amaral, a historian of the Peronist movement and its founder, strongman Juan Domingo Perón.
"Perón brooked no opposition in the congress and it ceased to be the representative of the people. Instead it was controlled by the executive and that is the way things are today. Kirchner runs the show in a personal way.
"He does not believe in institutions. He has not even had one cabinet meeting since he was inaugurated."
Supporters say he is just imposing working order on a broken political system. They point to the rejuvenation of the Supreme Court, now cleared of corrupt cronies of disgraced former president Carlos Menem and showing signs of vigour and independence.
But while the debate today centres on the president's growing power, such fears could dissipate in the future.
Problems loom on Kirchner's horizon. Inflationary pressures are building up in the economy and lack of investment in infrastructure could see rapid economic growth come up against power shortages as soon as next winter.
Having denounced it in his predecessors' administrations, Kirchner now sees accusations of corruption levelled against one of his closest political collaborators.
After four years spent hoarding popularity and power such problems are unlikely to derail a bid for re-election, if they fully emerge before then at all. But they could dog a second term - ominous in a country where presidents who enjoy highly successful first terms have a history of enduring far less successful second ones.