Yesterday's victory by Cristina Fernández Kirchner in Argentina's presidential election is historic. She becomes the first woman to be elected president of Argentina, and December 10 will mark the first time anywhere that a president will hand over the sash of office to his wife after a democratic vote.

Yet it was an election campaign marked by apathy, and after last night's victory there were few of the popular celebrations that have followed similar historic votes in other South American countries in recent years.

This is in part because the Government worked so hard to create the impression that the race was a foregone conclusion. Partly it is because the fragmented Opposition did so much to help them in this, failing to convince anyone that they were ready for power. Turnout was the lowest since 1928 in a country where voting is compulsory.

The Kirchners will point to the economic record of President Néstor Kirchner to explain his wife's victory. He has overseen more than 8 per cent growth in each of the five years since the depths of the economic crisis touched in 2002.

Unemployment and poverty rates have tumbled. The national debt has been negotiated down and the central bank's coffers are full thanks to booming commodity exports. They have also rallied many on the left to their side by pushing to bring the country's former military rulers to trial for crimes committed during the last military dictatorship.

But there is also a strong authoritarian streak that explains the Kirchners' current domination of Argentine politics. The powers of the presidency were greatly strengthened at the height of the crisis. President Kirchner inherited these and though the crisis has abated shows no signs of giving them up.

He has ruled largely by emergency decree and used the presidency's new freedom to spend a massive slice of the federal budget with no congressional oversight to build a heterodox cross-party coalition whose only ideology is loyalty to him and thus access to the swollen state coffers.

Two of the questions that will dominate his wife's administration are whether she will cede back to Congress some of these powers as the crisis of 2001 recedes in the national memory, or if she will not whether one of the various elements of the Opposition can build a convincing national alternative that can win power and do so instead.

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