Jump to content

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gelsomina (talk | contribs) at 13:57, 4 October 2007 (→Political career: I hope this solves the problem). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Cristina Elisabet Fernández (born February 19 1953) is an Argentine politician, senator for Buenos Aires Province and the First Lady of Argentina. She is also known as Cristina Kirchner and informally as "La Pingüina" (The [Female] Penguin, after her husband's Patagonian origins). In July 2007 she was officially confirmed as the ruling Front for Victory party's candidate for the presidency of Argentina in the general election scheduled for October 28 2007. [1] If elected, Fernández de Kirchner would become Argentina's second woman president, but only the first to be elected to occupy that office.

Education

Fernández studied law at the School of Legal and Social Sciences of the University of La Plata in the 1970s. She married a fellow university student, Néstor Kirchner, [2] the current president of Argentina, politically active in her same party, on 9 March 1975. Together they moved to the province of Santa Cruz, where they opened a law firm. There are now significant doubts regarding her law degree, as she is not inscribed in any lawyer's associations, and the law school(University of La Plata) has been reticent in answering journalists requests for transcripts and proofs of attendance. [3][4]

Political career

Cristina Fernández (on the right) next to U.S. First Lady Laura Bush, on 5 November 2005, during the state visit of the Bushes for the Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas

Fernández started her political career in a faction of the Justicialist Party, Tendencia Revolucionaria, in the 1970s. She was elected Deputy to the provincial legislature of Santa Cruz in 1989, and subsequently re-elected in 1993.

In 1995 she was elected to represent Santa Cruz in the Senate, and in 1997 in the Chamber of Deputies. In 2001 she won again a seat in the Senate.

Fernández provided the main backbone to her husband's successful campaign for the presidency of Argentina in 2003, against two other Justicialist candidates and several other competitors. In the April 27, 2003 presidential election first round, former president Carlos Saúl Menem won the greatest number of votes (25%), but failed to get the votes necessary to win an overall majority. A second-round run-off vote between Menem and second-place finisher Néstor Kirchner was scheduled for May 18. Feeling certain that he was about to face a resounding electoral defeat, Menem decided to withdraw his candidacy, thus automatically making Kirchner the new president, with 21.97% of the votes (the lowest number in the history of the country). [5]

As First Lady, Cristina Fernández has become an itinerant ambassador for her husband's government. Her highly combative speech style polarizes Argentine politics (recalling the style of Eva Perón) but seems to be appreciated by a large part of society, notably among lower-income citizens.

She was the main candidate for Senator of the Front for Victory faction of her party in the province of Buenos Aires, for the 23 October 2005 elections, in a heated campaign directed mainly against Hilda González de Duhalde, the wife of former interim president Eduardo Duhalde. Fernández won the elections by a 25% margin over González.

Presidential candidate

With the October 2007 elections approaching, Fernández de Kirchner began to receive repeated indirect support from members of her party as a prospective presidential candidate. [6] Some political analysts hypothesized that Néstor Kirchner would forgo reelection and support his wife, who could do the same for him after her term, thus solving the lame duck problem.[7] Surveys showed that the First Lady would win the presidential election by a wide margin over all other representative candidates (except her husband himself). [8] [9] On 1 July 2007, Chief of Cabinet Alberto Fernández (who often acts as a spokesperson for the presidency) told the press that Fernández de Kirchner would indeed be the presidential candidate, and that her campaign would be officially launched on 19 July. [1] [10] Four opinion polls published by Clarín on July 1 showed Kirchner's wife likely to win in a first round of balloting, with around 46 percent support and more than 30% lead over two other leading presidential contenders[11]

Statements

  1. “You can be sure that all and each one of us who have institutional responsibilities will raise not only our voice but will take concrete action against any sign of anti-Semitism. We are not willing to give away what has been a historic tradition in Latin America”.[12]
  2. “The present time Latin America is going through, with its impressive natural and human resources, devoid of racial and religious conflicts, is a unique moment, and I believe that Argentina and Argentines are at the doorstep of an unprecedented opportunity". [13]
  3. “I feel honored to belong to a generation that was a propitious victim of state terrorism”. [14]
  4. “Memory and freedom must be everybody’s daily exercise in order to prevent a new holocaust and a renewed violation of human rights”. [15]
  5. “Where do you imagine Evita to stand: asking not to go back to the past, or next to the mothers and grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo?". [16]
  6. “Peronism is so much like Argentines. We Peronists, just like all Argentines, are capable of spawning the most generous actions and the most sublime individuals, as well as the most despicable actions. That’s how contradictory we are. When kidnapping was rife in this country and people were made to disappear and thrown into the river, the defenders of press freedom were absent without giving notice”. [17]
  7. “Our society needs women to be more numerous in decision-making positions and in entrepreneurial areas. We always have to pass a twofold test: first to prove that, though women, we are no idiots, and second, the test anybody has to pass”. [18]
  8. “The utopias of a better world and a more just society have to do with words, with the generation of dreams, with imagination, with a very important identity that overcomes languages and is the identity of the human condition, to be able to recognize our own image in every fellow man, in a different age. I believe that the key to our time lies in this respect for diversity”. [19]
  9. "Hillary (Rodham Clinton) was able to position herself nationally because her husband was president. She didn't have a political career beforehand and that isn't my case," Fernandez de Kirchner said in an interview with CNN en Español, referring to her 30-year career in Argentine politics.

References

  1. ^ a b La Nación, July 1, 2007. Cristina Fernández será candidata.
  2. ^ Guareschi, Roberto (Nov. 5, 2005). "Not quite the Evita of Argentine legend". New Straits Times, p. 21.
  3. ^ Urgente 24 "¿Cristina es abogada?" tr:Is Cristina a Lawyer? [1]
  4. ^ Periodismo de Verdad, August 14, 2007. ¿Cristina es abogada?.
  5. ^ La Nación, April 28, 2003. Menem y Kirchner disputarán la segunda vuelta el 18 de mayo
  6. ^ DERF, 25 January 2007. El Jefe de Gabinete piensa en Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
  7. ^ Boston Herald, 6 February 2007. Argentina's Bill and Hillary: Which one will run?
  8. ^ Angus Reid Global Monitor: Polls & Research. 24 January 2007. Fernández de Kirchner is First Choice in Argentina.
  9. ^ Crónica, 30 January 2007. KIRCHNER O CRISTINA GANARÁN EN PRIMERA VUELTA, SEGÚN ENCUESTA.
  10. ^ BBC News, 1 July 2007. Argentine first lady bids to rule.
  11. ^ {http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-7-2/57175.html}
  12. ^ Nota en IPS Noticias 26/03/2007
  13. ^ Fuente: Telam 29/10/2006
  14. ^ An article in the web site of Disappeared Persons 06/02/2007
  15. ^ Nota en Clarin 25/04/2006
  16. ^ Nota en Clarin 27/07/2005
  17. ^ Nota en Clarin 06/05/2006
  18. ^ Nota en Clarin 20/10/2005
  19. ^ A speech published in the web site of the Cervantes Virtual Center
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Cristina_Fernández_de_Kirchner&oldid=162240714"