Argentina’s Fernandez does it all on her own

ARGENTINA'S populist centre-left President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has won re-election in a thumping landslide, taking 53 per cent of the votes cast with two-thirds of the 40m-strong country's polling stations having reported in.

It was the first time that Cristina Fernandez had fought an election without her late husband Nestor, her predecessor as president who died in October 2010 after a massive heart attack. She has remained in mourning since then, wearing more than 200 black outfits over the last year.

"This is a strange night for me," she told thousands of supporters of her Justicialist party who thronged Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires last night.

"This man who transformed Argentina led us all and gave everything he had and more... Without him, without his valour and courage, it would have been impossible to get to this point."

Nestor was president for four years from 2003, and is widely credited with having steered the country's now buoyant economy away from the wreckage of the 2001 economic crisis, increasing employment and chipping away at poverty. He also took on entrenched military and police interests in Argentina, which had suffered terribly at the hands of a military junta in the 1970s and 80s.

When he decided not to run in 2007, and Cristina stood in his stead, she won handsomely. But it was viewed in some quarters as a mere continuation of the policies of Nestor, the Argentinian press coining the term “presidential marriage” to describe their style of governing. Her re-election yesterday, the first for a female president in the macho world of South American politics, was all her own work.

Over the last year, she has staked out an increasingly combative position, engaging in international spats with Argentina's traditional regional powerhouse rival, Brazil, as well as tweaking the tail of America, seizing materials from a US military plane that had landed in Argentine in February 2011. She has also reignited tensions over the Falkland Islands.

Of course, the one name that will always be invoked around Kirchner is that of Eva Peron, the self-styled 'mother of the nation' who was married to president Juan Peron and who enjoyed a unique rapport with Argentina's army of poor - the descamisados ('shirtless ones') - during the 1940s and 50s.

In the past Cristina herself has encouraged comparisons with Peron, a dangerous game, saying that she identified herself "with the Evita of the hair in a bun and the clenched fist before a microphone", talking about her ability to inspire the country's working class. And she continues to adopt Peronista themes.

"This woman isn't moved by any interest. The only thing that moves her is profound love for the country. Of that I'm responsible," Kirchner said last night, channeling the spirit of Eva Peron far better than any Andrew Lloyd Webber musical could. "All I want is to keep collaborating ... to keep Argentina growing. I want to keep changing history." ·