From Patagonia to the palace: harry underwood on the rise of an Argentinian political dynasty |
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Argentina's presidential election this Sunday will see an awkward, beady-eyed man replaced by a glamorous, feisty 54-year-old woman. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, happy to talk about her plastic surgery in TV interviews, will take over the presidency from her husband, Nestor - and nobody is expecting more than cosmetic changes to the way the country is run.
Nestor and his wife have played out their careers in tandem ever since their 1975 marriage. Active student members of the Peronist left, they withdrew during the period of the military junta (1976-83), working as lawyers in the wilderness of Patagonia. Both revel in the nickname of pinguino (penguin) that recalls their time in icy isolation.
Nestor jumped from the obscurity of provincial governorship straight into the presidency in 2003. Inheriting a country still reeling from the devaluation crisis of 2001, he
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| The professional classes will continue to fume at the clumsy populism of Cristina Kirchner’s Justicialist party |
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has steadied the economy. Annual growth is now more than eight per cent.
The poor will welcome another Kirchner. But the professional classes and the landowners whose farming feeds the economy will continue to fume at the clumsy autocracy and populism of Kirchner's Justicialist party; on the campaign trail, Cristina theatrically placed hand on heart in front of a slogan proclaiming 'Flagbearer of the humble'.
Domestically, little will change. The armed forces will still be marginalised - not yet forgiven for the 1976-83 atrocities - while the government will continue to take a hands-on, protectionist role on the economy.
Abroad, business-friendly Cristina will try to perform a balancing act, attempting to rebuild Argentina's links with the US while continuing to enjoy close ties with the Yankee-hating president of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.
She should certainly do better than her nation's previous presidenta, Juan Peron's widow Isabelita - a nightclub dancer who took advice from a psychopathic mystic as the country slipped into anarchy. 
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 26, 2007
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