Word: kirchners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, President and First Lady-Senator of Argentina, should love Venezuela's Hugo Chavez unequivocally. After all, Chavez is using Venezuela's petroleum riches to shore up Argentina's struggling economy, buying $1 billion of the country's bonds and investing $400 million in a natural gas plant to bolster Buenos Aires' energy needs. Indeed, there used to be a lot of mutual affection among the Latin American leaders, fellow leftists all. Last March, the couple played host to Chavez, and allowed him to use his visit to stage a rally against the U.S. and President Bush...
Opponents and critics of the Argentine first couple immediately pounced on the incident as proof that Chavez was buying the support of the Kirchner government. "This is the proof of the corruption of this government," said Elisa Carrio, the main opposition candidate in the presidential campaign. The unseemliness of the airport discovery was not mitigated by Antonini Wilson's immediate flight from Argentina, apparently for Key Biscayne, Florida, where he maintains an apartment. A warrant has now been issued for his arrest by an Argentine court...
...Kirchner opponents wary of the Venezuelan President's cozy relations with Cuba and Iran have seized on an issue that may slow down what seemed to be Senator Kirchner's inevitable rise to the Presidency. The daily Clarin, Argentina's most widely read newspaper, carried an op-ed piece by one of its top editors, Ricardo Kirschbaum, calling the suitcase affair "one of the greatest misfortunes" in Mrs. Kirchner's campaign, stating that "Hugo Chavez is one of the core themes in the electoral campaign...
Political analyst Rosendo Fraga says that President Kirchner - an outsider in his own party - feels Cristina has a better chance of recruiting political support from outside traditional Peronist voters: "The electoral role of Cristina is very important because President Kirchner lacks support in the Peronist party structure; furthermore, he actually mistrusts the party structure." The timing appears to be keyed to Peronist setbacks in a number of recent provincial elections. The most resounding was a defeat in the federal capital of Buenos Aires, in which the conservative millionaire businessman and Boca football club president Mauricio Macri won an astounding...
Fraga also feels the president is wary of accusations he has ambitions for a life-long term in office: "Kirchner is also launching his wife's candidacy to show that he doesn't have ambitions to hang on to power indefinitely." Nevertheless, Fraga speculates that Mrs. Kirchner's announced candidacy, if successful, could well allow President Kirchner to run for reelection in 2011, when he hopes such criticism will have abated, the Kirchners then succeeding each other in office on a long-term basis. Says Fraga: "Kirchner has made a tactical retreat, but he has not abandoned his objective...