Christina Fernández and Nestor Kirchner

Abstract

Few first ladies and even fewer first gentlemen harbour political ambitions more openly than Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez, and still fewer actually manage to turn those goals into political reality. When former Mexican first lady Marta Sahagun de Fox raised the prospect of a presidential bid to succeed her husband, Vicente Fox, she was forced into a humiliating retreat - mostly due to her premature meddling and political miscalculations. Then again, Sahagun didn't have the political pedigree of Fernandez, or her husband's approval ratings on which to piggyback. If it is true that behind every man there is a great woman, then it is equally true that Fernandez has formed a solid team with her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner.As the first woman to be elected president of Argentina, Fernandez had a relatively easy road to the Casa Rosada, or pink house. Her gender was never much of an issue, either because of her prominence or because Argentina has been enamoured of female leaders in the past (witness the unelected Isabel Peron and Eva Peron, who never held office yet is revered as a cultural and political icon). It helped that she was glamorous and fashionable, two things it never hurts to be in Latin America.Fernandez and her Peronist Justicialist party had a promising start, leaving her nearest competitor in the dust with a 45 percent victory in the presidential election, before quickly plummeting in opinion polls through a series of policy blunders that commentators claimed were meant to reinforce her executive power. This is something most Argentine presidents have been accused of, including her husband.Fernandez ran an election campaign that was widely described as vague. Voters were led to believe that she would do little to change her husband's policies, but clearly it didn't matter to the electorate, who gave the outgoing Kirchner approval ratings of up to 60 percent. Fernandez's victory came as a surprise to no one, but, although Argentina may have laid to rest the ghosts of its violent military dictatorships, the class conflict, economic uncertainty, and authoritarian tendencies of presidencies past still reared their heads under both husband and wife.Granted, Kirchner had reasons to be confident of his performance. He was praised for his handling of Argentina's recovery after the 2001 economic meltdown, when his steady hand came as a relief to a country desperately in need of stability and leadership following an unprecedented default on its US$155 billion debt, the largest sovereign debt in history. This fact, combined with the deadly December 2001 protests that helped bring down the administration of Fernando de la Rua and a poverty rate that had skyrocketed to 57 percent in 2002, left a country that prided itself on being the most European of Latin American nations on par with regional banana republics.Kirchner took over when Argentina was deep in the midst of a four-year recession. The peso had been dropping in value since January 2002 and unemployment was at a staggering 40 percent. He oversaw a growth rate of eight percent in the three years after his election, and in 2005 cancelled Argentina's enormous debt to the International Monetary Fund. (It has since paid back more than $15 billion to the IMF and other lenders from the G7.)Both Kirchner and Fernandez struck the right chord with the masses by condemning big business and the IMF for their role in Argentina's breakdown and the abject failure of the Washington consensus model and its free-market fundamentalism that promoted a fixed exchange rate, privatization, and fiscal austerity. While declaring their support for a freemarket system, Kirchner and Fernandez both blame the IMF for pushing Argentina to the limit.We're not averse to capitalism. But if they used to say, 'Workers of the world unite!' then we also say today, 'Capitalists of the world, assume your social responsibility', Fernandez told Time magazine shortly before her election in 2007. …