of pesos to dollars required the government of Argentina to obtain an abundant supply of American dollars. At first, this supply was maintained by the privatization of nearly all of the Argentinian state's industries and pension funds. As the privatization process was completed, Argentina's agriculture export-based economy was unable to maintain a sufficient flow of dollars to the state, and the system began to require more and more sovereign debt. Fernando de la Rúa's presidency One of the key factors leading to the victory of the Alliance in the 1999 elections was its promise to uphold the convertibility plan. One of de la Rúa's campaign slogans declared "With me, one peso, one dollar" (). Despite a changing international economic situation (including economic downturns in Brazil, one of Argentina's key economic partners), and mounting demands for increased monetary sovereignty, the Alliance committed itself to maintain the status quo at all costs. October 2000 Crisis De la Rúa's political situation was precarious. His arrival to power in 1999 had been possible thanks to the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education (), a coalition formed by the Radical Civic Union and the FrePaSo, which managed to defeat the incumbent Justicialist Party (the Peronist party) in that year's presidential elections. However, the Alliance (as it was known) failed to achieve a majority in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, and lost the provincial elections to the Peronists, who then remained in charge of large and critical districts such as the Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Santa Fe provinces. The government coalition was strained from the first moment; the FrePaSo leaders resented being "junior members" of the government (being forced to that position after losing their bid to the Governorship of Buenos Aires), while the Radicals were divided between their left- and right-leaning factions (De la Rúa was a leader of the party's conservatives), especially regarding economic policy. In late 2000 a political scandal broke out when it was reported that SIDE, Argentina's intelligence service, had paid massive bribes to a number of senators to approve a controversial Labor Reform Act. The head of SIDE, Fernando de Santibañes, was a personal friend of De la Rúa. The crisis came to a head in October 2000 when Vice President Carlos Álvarez resigned, citing De la Rúa's unwillingness to tackle corruption. March 2001 Crisis De la Rúa's economic policies suffered a severe blow in March 2001 when