Word: kirchners
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...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...
...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...
...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...