Word: fern
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...panic. Earlier this year, Chávez saw plummeting oil prices threaten to undermine his socialist revolution, which has enfranchised Venezuela's poor but has also raised fears about authoritarian rule. Chávez rushed through a constitutional referendum last February that lets him run for re-election indefinitely. Fernández's midterm defeat, says Corrales, may have leaders like Chávez "asking if they should ease up on their ideological hard line or ramp it up to neutralize opponents before it's too late." In Honduras, a coup on the day of the Argentine vote forced leftist...
...Corrales says that coups are an "unacceptable" way for opponents to confront ambitious presidencies. But to keep her presidency relevant, Fernández, 56, will have to moderate her own political reach. Although Kirchner's Buenos Aires congressional slate lost to the more conservative opposition party, Union-Pro, he still gets a seat in the Chamber of Deputies because of proportional-voting rules. But Union-Pro leader and billionaire businessman Francisco de Narváez told the Buenos Aires daily La Nación that Kirchner "needs to step aside and let his wife be the nation's President...
...Corrales is quick to note that the region's trend toward "superpresidencies," which includes conservative leaders like Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, "is far from over." But Fernández - who does little to discourage comparisons to Eva Perón, the glamorous and powerful Argentine First Lady of the 1940s and '50s known as Evita - has had her clout both at home and abroad diminished to the point that Argentine pundits are even discussing whether she might soon resign. While that's unlikely, the rest of her term promises to be a slog, and her husband's widely discussed plans...
...Fernández's fall has been a steep one. Kirchner, elected in 2003, has been credited with nothing less than saving Argentina after its epic financial collapse of 2002. But he decided not to run for a second term in 2007, deferring instead to his wife, then a popular Senator. Though critics claimed their plan was simply to alternate in power for 16 years, Fernández won decisively and took office with a near 80% approval rating...
...Fernández, who like Kirchner hails from the provinces and butts heads with the Buenos Aires élite, insists she has simply tried to preserve the economic stability her husband created and deliver it to a broader swath of the working class. But when she saw that her poll numbers had plunged below 30% - and realized moreover that the recession and rising crime statistics only stood to sink them further - she moved this year's midterm elections from October to June. Hoping to shore up the Peronists' prospects, Kirchner announced he would run for a congressional seat from Buenos...