One of the signs of the change of era that is coming in Argentina is the absence of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from the forefront of politics. At 70 years old and with a six-year sentence for corruption behind her, the vice president will say goodbye to public office on December 9. It will be the last day of a mandate marked by Kirchner’s disagreements with the president, Alberto Fernández, and by an economy that is dying.
The most influential politician in the country has remained silent for much of the electoral campaign for the presidency between the Peronist Sergio Massa and the ultra Javier Milei in the second round. His step aside has left the way clear for Massa to distance himself from Kirchnerism, the dominant current in Peronism for two decades. In his search for the center vote, Massa has done everything possible to also separate himself from the Government of which he is a part as Minister of Economy.
Kirchner began the withdrawal on September 1, 2022, when a man tried to kill her at the door of her house in Buenos Aires with a shot that never came out. At the beginning of 2023, in the search for a candidate for Peronism, Kirchner proposed a proper name, Eduardo de Pedro. The Minister of the Interior was going to fight against Daniel Scioli, sponsored by Fernández. In less than 24 hours it became clear that the power of the two-time former president (2007-2015) is no longer what it was. Provincial governors and other heavyweights rallied behind Massa and forced others to step aside. The exception was the leader Juan Grabois, who was allowed to compete because he could bring a progressive vote that he viewed with suspicion to Massa.
The vice president showed unwavering public support for the unity candidate and that same week she appeared with him to show the repatriation of one of the planes used during the dictatorship to the flights of death, the one in which three of the founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and two French nuns were thrown alive into the sea. Kirchner led the operation to internally clean up the image of a cadre whom Kirchnerism considered a traitor during the seven years in which Massa broke the bond and did politics on her behalf.
That period of disagreement has been key, however, for the central objective of the end of the campaign: to show Massa as an autonomous candidate, without any conditioning from the politics that has disputed the president’s baton of command throughout his entire mandate. “Voting for Massa does not make you a Kirchnerist,” say posters posted in the streets and viralized on social networks in search of new support.
Kirchner accompanied Massa at an electoral event for the last time in mid-July. Joint appearances with Fernández and even with representatives of the ruling coalition Unión por la Patria (UxP) with a better image, such as the re-elected governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, have also been counted.
Massa assures that, if he is elected as head of state of Argentina this Sunday, power will no longer be distributed and will fall solely on him. “There was a coalition with transversal and not vertical distribution of responsibilities,” Massa criticized in a recent interview with EL PAÍS when speaking about the Fernández Government. “I had no conflict in my ministry, because I decided from the first to the last official,” he highlighted as a contrast.
Kirchner knows that it will be like this. Under a hypothetical Massa presidency, his power would be limited to a handful of legislators, including his son Máximo Kirchner, and to the province of Buenos Aires, the largest in the country. Her greatest concern comes from the judicial front: the corruption conviction will be reviewed by higher courts, but justice is also advancing in other cases against her for alleged money laundering and accusations of covering up the Iranians suspected of the attack against a Jewish mutual that left 84 died in 1994.
The vice president will reappear today before the cameras at the Río Gallegos polling station where she is authorized to vote. She was not in the UxP electoral bunker on the night of the primary elections on August 13 or during the first round, on October 22. She will be absent for the third time this Sunday. As in previous electoral appointments, she will await the results at her home in Río Gallegos, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz.
He plans to return to Buenos Aires on Monday and a few days later fly to Naples. She has been invited to the Italian city by the Federico II University, where she will speak on the risks facing democracy. In her speech she will fly over the result of the Argentine election this Sunday.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the key information on current events in the region.
#Cristina #Kirchner #great #absentee #Argentine #electoral #campaign