She is the glamorous senator who is also the wife of the Argentine President
and if the polls are correct she will breeze past the opposition and into
the Casa Rosada – or Pink House – as her husband’s successor after
tomorrow’s elections.
It is therefore inevitable that Cristina Fernández Kirchner is being compared
to Eva Perón, the actress who married the former dictator Juan Perón,
founder of the country’s ruling Peronist Party, and became his most potent
political asset. During her husband’s rule in the late 1940s and early 1950s
“Evita” was adored by the country’s poor for her glamour, charity work and
violent speeches from the balcony of the Casa Rosada attacking the country’s
well-off. To her followers she became a saintlike figure after her death
from cancer in 1952.
Peron’s deeply unpopular third wife, Isabel Perón, succeeded her husband as
President on his death in 1974, only to be deposed by a military coup in
1976. Now the descendents of Evita’s descamisados (“the shirtless ones”) are
set to make Mrs Kirchner the first woman elected president in Argentina’s
history. But while Evita inspired fanatical devotion in the Peronist masses,
Mrs Kirchner, 54, is favourite to win office amid general apathy in a campaign
that has failed to catch voters’ imagination.
Rather than Peronist fervour, her huge lead in the polls is built on a
reluctance to change the team that has overseen Argentina’s recovery from
the traumatic economic crash of 2001 and the lack of a credible alternative
among the opposition.
“My family is still poor,” says Federico López, a construction worker from the
working-class district of La Matanza. “But there is more work today and we
no longer fear we will go hungry. Cristina has experience from helping her
husband and I don’t know that any of the other candidates could run the
country any better.”
The Government has worked hard to create a sense of inevitability about the
election’s outcome. On the campaign trail Mrs Kirchner sounds less like a
candidate stumping for votes than someone assured of victory. She has
refused to debate with the other candidates and has ignored the media,
refusing requests for interviews.
Her husband, Néstor Kirchner, is pulling out all the stops in the push for a
first-round victory, blatantly throwing the resources of the State behind
her candidacy. Public television is saturated with ads highlighting the
Government’s achievements and this week Mr Kirchner twisted the arms of
local banks into cutting interest rates on small personal loans in a move
that the opposition claimed was blatant electioneering for his wife.
With most polls showing Mrs Kirchner leading her nearest rival by almost 25
per cent, the opposition candidates have made little headway in convincing
voters they can stop the Cristina bandwagon. Should she succeed her husband,
it would be the highpoint of a remarkable political partnership. They met
while studying law in the University of La Plata in the 1970s. and their big
political break came in 2003 when internal Peronist feuding led to the
ruling faction plucking him from obscurity in Patagonia and making him its
winning candidate in the presidential election. In 2005 he orchestrated his
wife’s “promotion” from senator for Santa Cruz to senator for Buenos Aires –
by far the country’s most populous and influential province.
Mrs Kirchner is known for her immaculate grooming and love of designer labels
and has shown a genuine interest in the diplomacy that so bores her husband.
In the Senate her obvious intelligence and combative personality made her
one of its most capable operators before he won the presidency. In their
four years in charge, Argentina has boomed as it rebounds from the depths of
the crash, with 8 per cent growth last year. Unemployment has halved and
poverty rates have been slashed. The pampas are flush with new wealth,
thanks to Chinese demand for soy, and a forest of cranes is testimony to the
construction boom in Buenos Aires.
As the economy has recovered the Government has raised taxes on the roaring
export sector in order to redirect some of the new wealth towards the poor
in the form of social assistance programmes. It has promoted local
industrial champions as part of its campaign of “national capitalism”. All
the while Mr Kirchner has maintained a healthy budget surplus, something
unprecedented in modern Argentine history.
The Government has trumpeted these achievements but there has been growing
discontent in recent months. There are problems looming on the horizon.
Voters have declared themselves worried about rising inflation and a recent
crime wave. The Government was also hit this year by energy shortages that
caused blackouts, and there have been several corruption scandals, one of
which forced the resignation of the finance minister.
Though still a healthy 45 per cent, President Kirchner’s approval rating has
dropped 22 points this year alone. Such problems are unlikely to halt his
wife’s charge to the presidency, especially as one area of public life not
to recover from the crisis is politics.
All the main political parties fragmented under the pressure of the crisis of
2001, including the Peronists, who are historically prone to factionalism.
In the absence of proper political parties access to state resources rather
than ideology has become the key to building the sort of coalition necessary
to win the presidency.
To win outright Mrs Kirchner must win 45 per cent of the vote or else 40 per
cent and hold a ten-point lead over her nearest rival. If she falls short of
40 per cent, the candidate most likely to face her in a November run-off
round is Elisa Carrió, a former beauty queen, who made her name as an
anticorruption crusader.
The weight of the Government’s backing means Mrs Kirchner remains a likely
first-round winner and much of the debate in Argentina’s media is about how
a Cristina presidency might differ from her husband’s.
One likely area of change is in foreign relations. Mrs Kirchner is an admirer
of Hillary Clinton and has visited the US several times during her husband’s
term. She would likely seek to warm up currently frosty ties with
Washington, especially if Mrs Clinton becomes president.
The voice of the masses
1919 Maria Eva Duarte born into extreme poverty
1944 After some success as a radio actress, and a string of affairs
with military and political figures, meets army officer Colonel Juan Perón
They marry within a year despite the disapproval of Argentina’s elite
1946 Perón elected President after a campaign relying on Evita’s
popularity among poor workers
1947 A women-only branch of the Peronist party is formed and Evita
begins to build a political powerbase among trade unions
1951 A vast crowd outside the presidential palace demand Evita stands
as vice-presidential candidate alongside her husband. She accedes but bows
out because of ill health
1952 Makes final public appearance at her husband’s inauguration before
dying of cancer on July 26
Source: Evita Peron Historical Research Foundation
