(CNN Spanish) — Vice-President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, presided over the act commemorating the 20th anniversary of Néstor Kirchner’s arrival to the presidency of Argentina, where she gave a speech in which she reclaimed her deceased’s legacy Husband.
“When Néstor arrived, retiring was not a right,” recalled Cristina Kirchner, recalling the 2001 crisis that preceded Kirchner’s first presidency, according to information from the state news agency Télam.
Although she had already said that she would not run as a candidate, many in Argentina awaited her final decision, even if the former president once again avoided providing too many details both on her own candidacy and on any support for one of the possible candidates of Kirchnerism .
Cristina reserved part of her speech to former president Mauricio Macri, leader of the opposition, to whom she blamed the country’s indebtedness to the International Monetary Fund. “The IMF gave Macri $57 billion to win the election,” the vice president said, according to Télam.
The vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, speaks to her supporters in the Plaza de Mayo (Credit: LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images)
President Alberto Fernández, who for the moment has not publicly supported any candidate and who was one of the major absentees at this Thursday’s event, insists on the importance of the participation of the governing coalition Frente de Todos in the open, simultaneous and mandatory primaries (the so-called STEP) with different candidates, which never happened in Peronism.
On stage, together with the vice president, several representatives of the Frente de Todos, as well as the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof; the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro; the Minister of the Economy, Sergio Massa; the national deputy and son of the vice president, Máximo Kirchner, and the governor of the province of Santa Cruz, Alicia Kirchner, among other leaders.
Massa, who various polls indicate as the best positioned to run for the presidency, has already expressed himself publicly against the option proposed by President Fernández. However, he has not yet confirmed whether he will be a candidate.
The other positioned is “Wado” De Pedro, son of those who disappeared from the last dictatorship and trusted person of the vice president, who within Peronism some point to as a possible candidate.
CFK aims for the ballot (like Macri)
“The important thing is to enter the ballot,” said the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in a long television interview last week in which she confirmed that she will not run for president in October.
Although she also launched some criticism of President Alberto Fernández, the vice president defended having chosen him as candidate in 2019: “It was a good strategy”, she said, adding: “We had to ensure the triumph of Peronism”.
This interview was released two days after the extensive letter in which Fernández de Kirchner confirmed that he will not run in this year’s elections and which was published while the Justicialist Party Congress was taking place, where several leaders cheered for a your application.
To the surprise of many, Fernández de Kirchner and former president Mauricio Macri share an electoral vision for October’s presidential elections: the definition in the runoff seems inevitable.
“We will go to a second round with this new, more disruptive expression,” said Macri, leader of Together for Change, in relation to his strength and Javier Milei, of La Libertad Avanza. At the opposite ideological poles, Fernández de Kirchner, the main contact person of the Frente de Todos in power, assured that “the important thing is to get to the ballot”.
If the run-off scenario hypothesized by Kirchner and Macri were fulfilled, no force would obtain the minimum necessary of 45% to win in the first round nor would they exceed 40% with a 10-point lead over the second force. Consequently, this projection includes, at least, the participation of an opposition force in the final vote for Argentina’s presidency.
The last antecedent of a second round of elections in Argentina dates back to 2015. At that time, the Cambiemos coalition, now Juntos por el Cambio, defeated the Front for Victory, which brought together Kirchnerism and Peronism linked to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. That vote was the one that consecrated Macri president of the Argentines. This is why the run-off phase is exciting Together for Change, even if it has to resolve the internal elections in the primaries on August 13 first.
On the opposite side of Kirchnerism, the candidates of Together for Change who are being listened to are Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, head of the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires; Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former security minister; Gerardo Morales, president of the Radical Civic Union and governor of Jujuy since 2015; Facundo Manes, the neuroscientist made the leap into politics in 2021; and Miguel Ángel Pichetto, who represents the Peronist branch of Together for Change.
The legal troubles of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Fernández de Kirchner was found guilty of fraudulent administration and damage to public administration during a period that spanned her two presidencies (2007-2011 and 2011-2015), through the extraction of state funds for her benefit or that of third parties. The vice president has always denied the allegations and considers the whole process no longer a political persecution.
Although the vice president has immunity and cannot be detained, as this sentence is of the first degree, it is not yet effective.
In that defense he made from his congressional office, he said, for the first time, that he would not run for any office, although the sentence did not prevent him from aspiring for office. However, and despite his declarations, since then the foundations of Kirchnerism have continued to encourage his eventual candidacy.
With information by Iván Pérez Sarmenti and Ignacio Grimaldi
