Word: kirchners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rare to see Argentina's First Family convey political humility. But as President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her husband (and presidential predecessor) Néstor Kirchner absorbed their startling defeat in Sunday's midterm elections, they both offered unusual hints of contrition. "In a democracy, you win and you lose," said Fernández after her Peronist party's congressional majority had vanished, leaving her to deal with a potentially hostile parliament over the last 2½ years of her term. Kirchner, who resigned as the Peronists' leader after suffering a close but stunning loss...
...well. The Argentine poll was a referendum on Fernández's often confrontational leadership style - which voters and financial markets alike decided isn't all that well suited to rescuing South America's second-largest economy from the ravages of a global recession. The Fernández-Kirchner comeuppance may well be taken as a first sign that the economic downturn is reining in the region's increasingly powerful Presidents, especially the leftists who this decade have become a popular counter to U.S. political and economic hegemony in the Americas. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...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...
...Within months, though, she was locked in acrimonious standoffs with everyone from farmers, who mobilized against her hikes in commodity-export taxes, to opposition leaders, who decried her efforts to nationalize private pension funds and her government's ties to a Venezuelan financial scandal. They also argued that Kirchner was still calling the shots from the presidential palace. Even her Vice President, Julio Cobos, last year cast the deciding Senate vote against her and for the farmers in a humiliating policy defeat...
...everyone, but it isn't there to eliminate the realities that exist in every country - and in every professional and economic sector - that give the more affluent a wider variety of choices, and the ability to seek élite care." With reporting by Bruce Crumley / Paris and Stephanie Kirchner / Berlin...