Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

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Cristina Elizabet Fernández de Kirchner, born February 19, 1953), commonly known as Cristina Fernández or Cristina Kirchner, is the current President of Argentina. A member of the Justicialist Party, she was a Senator for Buenos Aires Province prior to taking office. She is the wife of former President of Argentina Néstor Kirchner, and acted as First Lady during his term.

In the October 2007 general election, Fernández ran for the presidency of Argentina, representing the ruling Front for Victory party. She won with 45.3% of the vote, a 22% lead over her nearest rival. This was one of the widest margins obtained by a candidate since democracy returned in 1983, and it avoided the need for a runoff election.^[2] She is Argentina's first elected female President, and the second female President ever to serve (after Isabel Martinez de Perón, 1974–1976).

Personal life

Fernández was born in Tolosa, a suburb west of La Plata, Province of Buenos Aires, daughter of Eduardo Fernández and Ofelia Esther Wilhelm. She studied law at the National University of La Plata during the 1970s. During her studies there, she met her future spouse, Néstor. They were married on March 9, 1975, and had two children: Máximo and Florencia.^[3] Florencia received international media attention during early 2008 when she started keeping a Fotolog.^[4][5][6]

Political career

Fernández started her political career in the Peronist Youth movement of the Justicialist Party in the 1970s. During the period of authoritarian rule in the country, she and Néstor dropped out of politics and practiced law in Río Gallegos. She picked up politics again in the late 1980s, and was elected to the Santa Cruz Provincial Legislature in 1989, a position to which she was re-elected in 1993.

In 1995 Fernández was elected to represent Santa Cruz in the Senate. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1997, and in 2001, returned to the Senate. Fernández provided the main backbone to her husband's successful campaign for the presidency in 2003, against two other Justicialist candidates and several other competitors. In the April 27, 2003, presidential election first round, former president Carlos Saúl Menem won the greatest number of votes (25%), but failed to get the votes necessary to win an overall majority. A second-round run-off vote between Menem and runner-up Néstor Kirchner was scheduled for May 18. Feeling certain that he was about to face a resounding electoral defeat, Menem decided to withdraw his candidacy, thus automatically making Kirchner the new president, with 22% of the votes (the lowest number in the history of the country).^[7]

During her husband's term, Fernández became an itinerant ambassador for his government. Her highly combative speech style polarized Argentine politics, recalling the style of Eva Perón. Although she repeatedly rejected the comparison later, Cristina once said in an interview that she identified herself "with the Evita of the hair in a bun and the clenched fist before a microphone" (the typical image of Eva Perón during public speeches) more than with the "miraculous Eva" of her mother's time, who had come "to bring work and the right to vote for women".^[8][9][10]

Fernández was the main candidate for Senator of the Front for Victory faction of her party in the province of Buenos Aires, for the October 2005 elections, in a heated campaign directed mainly against Hilda González de Duhalde, the wife of former president Eduardo Duhalde. Kirchner won the elections by a 25% margin over González de Duhalde.

Election to Presidency of Argentina

See also: Argentine general election, 2007

President-elect Cristina Kirchner celebrates election night with her husband and predecessor, Néstor.

With Fernández leading all the pre-election polls by a wide margin, her challengers were trying to force her into a run-off. She needed either more than 45% of the vote, or 40% of the vote and a lead of more than 10% over her nearest rival, to win outright. Fernández won the election in the first round with 45.3% of the vote, followed by 22% for Elisa Carrió (candidate for the Civic Coalition) and 16% for former Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna. Eleven others split the remaining 15%.^[11] Mrs. Kirchner was popular among the suburban working class and the rural poor, while Ms. Carrió received more support from the urban middle class, as did Mr. Lavagna.^[12] Of note, Kirchner lost the election in the three largest cities (Buenos Aires, Córdoba and Rosario), although she won in most other places elsewhere, including the large provincial capitals such as Mendoza and Tucumán.^[13]

The president elect began a four-year term on December 10, 2007, facing challenges including inflation, union demands for higher salaries, private investment in key areas, lack of institutional credibility (exemplified by the controversy surrounding the national statistics bureau, INDEC), utility companies demanding authorization to raise their fees, low availability of cheap credit to the private sector, and the upcoming negotiation of the defaulted foreign debt with the Paris Club.^[14][15][16]