Word: kirchners
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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...
...affair has also brought into focus the issue of alleged corruption in the Kirchner administration. Only last month, economy minister Felisa Miceli was forced to resign after a bag containing cash totaling some $60,000 was discovered in her office bathroom. Her resignation followed other revelations regarding bribery and false billing in government contracts, as well as accustions that Kirchner's administration has been tampering with official inflation and unemployment figures to make both appear lower than they are in reality...
While Senator Kirchner is still the favorite to become the next President of Argentina, her government will have to live with this new legacy. "Mrs. Kirchner's administration will probably be facing more difficulties than could have been foreseen only a short time ago," says political analyst Rosendo Fraga. The suitcase affair may be more harmful to Argentina's relations with Chavez. "The case of the $800,000 has turned the relationship with Venezuela into a political problem," says Fraga. "Kirchner tried to convince Chavez to accept some of the political cost of the suitcase affair, but Chavez refused...