Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's convicted ex-president, would consider running against Javier Milei in 2027 if her ban from office is lifted, the Washington Post reported.
"When I recover my political rights, why not?" Kirchner, 73, said in her first interview with a foreign outlet since her sentencing, adding that the opposition had yet to unite behind a candidate. She is serving a six-year sentence at her Buenos Aires apartment and is barred for life from holding public office.
Kirchner's remarks reopen a leadership contest that Peronism, the populist leftist movement she leads, had begun to settle in favour of Axel Kicillof, the governor of Buenos Aires Province and her former economy minister. Kicillof has spent the past two months building a national movement to take on Milei, without declaring a candidacy, and a Trespuntozero poll in May found 42% of respondents would definitely or possibly vote for him, against 34% for the right-wing libertarian leader.
The rift is already visible. On October 17, Peronist Loyalty Day, Kicillof told a rally in La Matanza that "Peronism will govern Argentina again", while Kirchner's son Maximo, who leads the La Campora faction, staged a rival event in Resistencia, in Chaco Province. "Cristina is no longer its undisputed leader, but she has retained the ability to prevent new leadership from consolidating," political scientist María Esperanza Casullo told AP in September.
Any comeback now depends on her lawyers. Kirchner and her counsel Rafael Valim, who advised Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva when he fought his own corruption convictions, have asked the UN Human Rights Committee to rule that she was denied due process. The committee cannot overturn national courts, although Argentina is bound by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. "If Argentina fails to comply, I foresee an irresistible social mobilisation by the Argentine people," Valim told the Washington Post.
Kirchner, who served as Argentina's president from 2007 to 2015 and as vice-president from 2019 to 2023, was convicted in 2022 over the award of road-building contracts in Santa Cruz province to a business ally, and the Supreme Court upheld the verdict in June 2025. She also faces a new money-laundering trial that opened last month. She denies wrongdoing. "Tell me where I put the money," she said, arguing that a guilty politician could have bought off a judiciary she called corrupt.
She conceded that Peronism had brought about its own defeat in 2023. Consumer prices rose 211.4% in 2023, including December after Milei took office, while poverty reached 41.7% in the second half. Milei then beat Economy Minister Sergio Massa with almost 56% of the vote, promising to revive the economy through libertarian shock therapy. "There was a breakdown in the culture of work," Kirchner said, describing voters who saw neighbours on state benefits earning as much as those who worked eight-hour days.
Milei’s economic record is mixed. Annual inflation slowed to 33.4% in September from a peak of 289.4% in April 2024, and his La Libertad Avanza party won the October 2025 midterm elections with 40.8% of the vote. Poverty, however, rose to 32.3% in the first half of 2026 and unemployment climbed to 7.9% in the second quarter, according to the INDEC statistics agency. Foreign investment is returning in export-oriented sectors such as oil and mining, while manufacturing and traditional industry are showing signs of strain.
A University of San Andrés survey in October put disapproval of his government at 60%, yet La Libertad Avanza still led voting intentions with 26% to the Peronists' 24%. Economy Minister Luis Caputo said in September that fear of a Peronist return could weigh on investors before the vote, calling Kirchnerism "hell" and Kicillof "the antichrist".
Kirchner, who still chairs the Justicialist Party, polls slightly better than Milei, though both have approval ratings in the 30s, according to the Washington Post. She predicted that the right-wing tide would turn and Republicans would lose the US midterms on November 3, saying that Donald Trump, the man who has done everything to help right-wing governments win in Latin America, "will lose the elections in his own country".
No comments:
Post a Comment