ARGENTINA: Kirchner’s Death Raises Questions About President Fernández

October 28, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 27, 2010 (IPS) – The death of former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) Wednesday brought to an end the political partnership he formed with his wife, President Cristina Fernández. Now all eyes are on her.

After he was elected with a mere 22 percent of the vote when his rival pulled out of the second round of the election, Kirchner set out to fulfill an agenda that included longstanding demands by a population impoverished by years of recession and the 2001 economic collapse, as well as demands by groups fighting the impunity surrounding the human rights crimes of the 1976-1983 dictatorship and the corruption of the armed forces and the judiciary.

His economic policies, supported by booming international demand for commodities, brought to an end the country’s long recession and the most severe debt default in the history of this South American country. He swapped a large part of the sovereign debt and paid off the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and swiftly brought down the soaring poverty and unemployment rates.

An overhaul of the Supreme Court did away with the bad reputation that tarnished the entire judiciary. And Kirchner’s government pushed through the adoption of international human rights treaties and the repeal of the amnesty laws and pardons that stood in the way of bringing to trial those accused of human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship.

He also carried out a purge of the country’s military and police leadership.

However, his administration was criticised for excess use of emergency decrees, with which he frequently bypassed the legislative process, and was shaken by several corruption scandals involving government officials.

But Kirchner built up a strong leadership that enabled him to name his wife — and right-hand woman — then-senator Fernández, as his chosen successor in the 2007 presidential elections.

Once Fernández took office, Kirchner did not limit himself to being just the president’s husband. Besides holding a seat in the legislature, he was head of the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party and was named first secretary general of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

The former president’s influence in the new administration was so great that President Fernández’s challenge now is to demonstrate that his death does not mark the end of an era and will not jeopardise the stability of the government.

The new political scenario could weaken Fernández, who has over a year left in her term. But it could also strengthen her, if she manages to build a new leadership style of her own.

Kirchner, 60, had a heart attack Wednesday morning while at home with his wife in their hometown of El Calafate in the southern province of Santa Cruz. He died in the local hospital.

What lies ahead "is a critical juncture for gauging the president’s hold on leadership," but what is being seen now "is an enormous underestimation of her influence," political scientist Carla Carrizo at the Catholic University of Argentina told IPS.

In Carrizo’s view, the country’s "institutional continuity is not at risk, and Fernández has an opportunity to build a new leadership style, broader and less sectarian than that of Kirchner."

However, the public expressions of mourning already indicate that "politicians and social organisations have a paternalistic attitude with regard to what might happen."

The analyst was referring to remarks by political leaders supporting Fernández’s ability to continue governing, as well as to statements by others who stressed that Kirchner was irreplaceable.

"Our country needs that man so much," human rights activist Estela de Carlotto said, visibly moved. "Someone indispensable has been lost." Carlotto is head of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, one of the civil society organisations close to the ruling faction of the Peronist Party.

Lawyer Natalia Gherardi, director of the Latin American Justice and Gender Group (ELA), pointed out that Fernández "is a political figure in her own right," even if many of the decisions by her government were reached jointly with Kirchner because "they were a power duo.

"I hope she won’t have to face greater challenges, above and beyond her personal grief and mourning," she told IPS. "She was a respected political figure even before he designated her as the candidate to succeed him."

Although "it was regrettable that she was hand-picked, which undermined her legitimacy," Fernández "has power of her own, and can recover from this," Gherardi said.

She added that she does not believe substantial changes will occur in the government.

But other observers believe questions have been raised with respect to the direction that the president will now take — whether she will continue to base her government on support from factions in the Peronist Party, the labour unions and social organisations, or will build a new, broader support base.

"The president should design a formula for governance, a style of her own, and if she is interested in projecting her leadership into the future (beyond the 2011 elections), she will have to build a leadership that is independent of the current coalition," Carrizo said.

To do that, she would have to win support from new groups in Congress, which is highly fragmented, within an overall context of polarisation between the government and the opposition.

Although there are as yet no clear-cut candidates for the October 2011 presidential elections, opinion polls showed that the president and her husband were in the lead, with over 30 percent support each, far ahead of other hopefuls.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

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Kirchner Rescued Argentina’s Economy, Helped Unite South America

October 28, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy
Originally published on the Guardian Unlimited, October 27, 2010

Read the article in its original form on the Guardian website
En Español

By Mark Weisbrot

The sudden death of Néstor Kirchner today is a great loss not only to Argentina but to the region and the world. Kirchner took office as president in May 2003, when Argentina was in the initial stages of its recovery from a terrible recession. His role in rescuing Argentina’s economy is comparable to that of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression of the United States. Like Roosevelt, Kirchner had to stand up not only to powerful moneyed interests but also to most of the economics profession, which was insisting that his policies would lead to disaster. They proved wrong, and Kirchner was right.

Argentina’s recession from 1998-2002 was indeed comparable to the U.S. Great Depression in terms of unemployment, which peaked at more than 21 percent, and lost output (about 20 percent of GDP). The majority of Argentines, who had until then enjoyed living standards among the highest in Latin America, were pushed below the poverty line. In December of 2001 and January 2002, the country underwent a massive devaluation, a world-historical record sovereign default on $95 billion of debt, and a collapse of the financial system.

Although some of the heterodox policies that ultimately ensured Argentina’s rapid recovery were begun in the year before Kirchner took office, he had to follow them through some tough challenges to make Argentina the fastest-growing economy in the region.

One big challenge came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fund had been instrumental in bringing about the collapse – by supporting, among other bad policies, an overvalued exchange rate with ever-increasing indebtedness at rising interest rates. But when Argentina’s economy inevitably collapsed, the Fund offered no help, just a series of conditions that would impede the economy’s recovery. The IMF was trying to get a better deal for the foreign creditor. Kirchner rightly refused the Fund’s conditions, and the IMF refused to roll over Argentina’s debt.

In September of 2003 the battle came to a head when Kirchner temporarily defaulted to the Fund rather than accept its conditions. It was an extraordinarily gutsy move – no middle-income country had ever defaulted to the Fund, only a handful of failed or pariah states like Iraq or Congo. That’s because the IMF was seen as having the power to cut off even trade credits to a country that defaulted to them. No one knew for sure what would happen. But the Fund backed down and rolled over the loans.

Argentina went on to grow at an average of more than 8 percent annually through 2008, pulling more than 11 million people in a country of 40 million out of poverty. The policies of the Kirchner governmen, including the Central Bank targeting of a stable and competitive real exchange rate, and taking a hard line against the defaulted creditors – were not popular in Washington or among the business press. But they worked.

Kirchner’s successful face-off with the IMF came at a time when the Fund was rapidly losing influence in the world, after its failures in the Asian economic crisis that preceded Argentina’s collapse. It showed the world that a country could defy the IMF and live to tell about it, and contributed to the ensuing loss of IMF influence in Latin America and middle-income countries generally. Since the IMF was at the time the most important avenue of Washington’s influence in low- and middle-income countries, this also contributed to the demise of the United States’ influence, and especially in the recently won independence of South America.

And Kirchner played a major role in consolidating this independence, working with the other left governments including Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. Through institutions such as UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations), MERCOSUR (the South American trading bloc), and numerous commercial agreements, South America was able to dramatically alter its trajectory. They successfully backed Bolivia’s government against an extra-parliamentary challenge from the right in 2008, and most recently stood behind Ecuador in the attempted coup there a few weeks ago. Unfortunately they did not succeed in overturning last year’s military coup in Honduras, where U.S. backing of the coup government proved decisive. But Argentina, together with UNASUR, still refuses to allow Honduras back into the OAS, despite heavy lobbying from Washington.

Kirchner also earned respect from human rights organizations for his willingness to prosecute and extradite some of the military officers accused of crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship – reversing the policies of previous governments. Together with his wife, current president Cristina Fernández, Néstor Kirchner has made an enormous contribution in helping to move Argentina and the region in a progressive direction. Although these efforts have not generally won him much favor in Washington and in international business circles, history will record him not only as a great president but an independence hero of Latin America.

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.

This work by Mark Weisbrot, also published by CEPR, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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