Despite the fact that the Argentine justice found her guilty of corruption, Vice President Cristina Kirchner continues to summon the crowds, as demonstrated by the large number of supporters gathered in Plaza de Mayo the day before to listen to her. R.F.I. He asked María Esperanza Casullo, a political scientist at the National University of Río Negro, why.
On a holiday for “Día de la Patria”, under rain in Buenos Aires and in front of the government house, tens of thousands of supporters sang “Cristina presidenta”, despite the fact that Argentine vice president Cristina Kirchner is sentenced to six years in prison and has disqualification for fraud to the State.
Cristina Kirchner immediately evoked the coming to power 20 years ago of her late husband, Néstor Kirchner. Despite the galloping inflation and the economic crisis that marks the end of the government of President Fernández, close to Kirchnerism, she continues to unite a significant sector of the electorate.
On the twelve years of Kirchnerism, four for her husband and eight for her, opinions differ. There are those who do not vote for Peronism and reject the Argentine leader. “However, there is also a base of Peronist voters, those with whom Kirchner has a very strong relationship. The latter consider that this period was economically good,” the political scientist explained to RFI. Maria Hope Casullo.
“In his speech the day before, Kirchner mentioned a salary in dollars that was among the highest in Latin America. He also said that they were years in which progress was made on a progressive agenda, for example, the law of equal marriage. Progress was also made in the trials of the perpetrators of State terrorism in the 1970s, etc.” This explains, according to Casullo, why the words of the vice president “resound in the Peronist sectors, which are composed mainly of workers, youth, as well as people with limited resources and excluded people.”
Rules out being a presidential candidate
At 70 years old and despite a six-year prison sentence for corruption, Cristina Fernández wants to maintain her weight in the Peronist ranks. In her speech, she defended her own years of government as head of state, but reiterated that she will not be a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in the next elections. At the end of April, Kirchner said that she had been “condemned, proscribed and disqualified”, although the path to an eventual presidential candidacy is not completely closed.
The political scientist María Esperanza Casullo underlines that “the Argentine vice president has several causes, although she herself has specified that she has several appeal instances left. As she mentioned before, Kirchner fears that the Supreme Court of Justice, if it will appear shortly before the elections, could declare it disqualified, forcing it to interrupt the electoral process”.
The ruling Peronism has not yet decided whether to present several candidates or one by consensus in the Mandatory Primaries on August 13, which define the presidential nominations.
