The former president and former vice president Cristina Fernández ran on Monday to preside over Peronism with the aim of “straightening and ordering” that opposition force, after the defeat in the last presidential elections, and offering Argentines an alternative to the libertarian government of Javier Milei.
The announcement spread on her social networks marks that the most influential woman in Argentine politics in the last two decades does not plan to retire or delegate her leadership, in addition to preparing the ground for an eventual candidacy in the 2025 legislative elections.
“From a very young age I have been active in Peronism; However, I have never seen, in contemporary and democratic Argentina, that our country in general and Peronism in particular lived through a moment like the current one,” said the two-time president between 2007 and 2015.
“It is clear that we must straighten out what is crooked and order what is disordered. This raises the need to create a space for discussion and participation that does not exist today and whose absence only generates confusion and emptiness,” argued the person who held the vice presidency in the center-left government of Alberto Fernández between 2019 and 2023.
The Justicialista party (Peronism) has been headless since the resignation of former President Fernández after the defeat in the 2023 general elections that declared Milei president and will elect new party authorities on November 17.
The center-left leader is not the only one interested in leading the party founded by Juan Domingo Perón in the mid-1940s. The other candidate is the governor of the province of La Rioja, Ricardo Quintela, from the most conservative current within of that force.
Fernández was sentenced in 2022 to six years in prison for fraudulent administration and perpetual disqualification from holding public office. However, as the conviction is not final until the Supreme Court rules, the former president can run without restrictions.
“I have no doubt that, at this stage, the party is the most appropriate place to develop the continent that generates the content and that it also has direction and objectives,” said Fernández, 71, in an open letter addressed to “the Peronist comrades, and the Argentines who never were, too.”
When justifying his decision to go for the presidency of Peronism for the first time in his political career, Fernández defined Milei as “strange and dangerous ‘leadership’ of chaos and destruction from which nothing good can come of all Argentines.” ”.
“Not only does he shout and insult from the stage in an increasingly aggressive, violent and profane manner at anyone who expresses an opinion different from his, but he also attacks retirees, universities and even mental health hospitals with his ax.” , Fernández listed.
Knowing that her political movements upset investors and markets, the former president announced that she is willing to promote from Peronism a series of reforms that were taboo during her two populist mandates, such as a labor reform, public education and security; or the reduction of the State and the control of the fiscal deficit, among others.
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