Argentina's Kirchner: Powerful, Divisive, And Tainted By Fraud

Buenos Aires, Dec 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Dec, 2022 ) :During two decades at the core of Argentine politics, Cristina Kirchner has drawn adoration and hatred in equal measure, and even a fraud conviction is unlikely to push her out of the corridors of power anytime soon.

Despite her conviction on Tuesday on corruption charges -- which landed her a six-year jail term and a lifetime ban on holding public office -- she has congressional immunity and appeals could tie the sentence up in court for years.

However, Kirchner has vowed she will not seek any public office in the 2023 general elections, placing a giant question mark over her future in politics and whether she will spend any time in jail.

Kirchner, who can be as combative and sarcastic as she can be charming and astute, considers herself a victim of a political witch hunt by her enemies.

"This court has been a true firing squad," the auburn-haired politician told the court last week, accusing prosecutors of having "dedicated themselves to disrespecting and insulting me." The trial unfolded over three years to a backdrop of increasing political polarization and a deteriorating economy in a nation weary of its seemingly endless debt crisis and annual inflation which could reach 100 percent by the end of 2022.

While her political star has faded in recent years, Kirchner still commands significant support among followers of the center-left Peronist movement, and it is unclear how they will react to the news of her conviction and sentence.

She was found guilty of fraudulently awarding public works contracts in her stronghold in Patagonia as president between 2007 and 2015 When prosecutors announced they were seeking a 12-year sentence against her in late August, her backers flooded into the streets outside her nondescript apartment building in the swish Recoleta suburb, holding vigils for several days.

During one of these protests on September 1, a man shoved a revolver in her face and pulled the trigger -- but the gun did not fire.

- Power couple - Kirchner was born in 1953 in the small town of Tolosa, just outside the capital Buenos Aires.

The daughter of a bus driver and a housewife, she has often played up her lower middle class roots, even though she does not hide her love for luxury brands and travel.

She came to prominence as part of the ultimate political power couple, with she and her late husband Nestor Kirchner serving a collective 12 years in the Casa Rosada, the pink presidential palace.

To her working-class base, the Kirchners were the saviors after Argentina's 2001 economic meltdown and social unrest that followed the largest debt default in history, standing up for the little guy against bullies both foreign and domestic.

Cristina's two terms in government between 2007-2015, during a commodities boom, were characterized by protectionist policies and populist social welfare programs, rolling out multiple subsidies that raised public spending.

However, her detractors see her as a corrupt, overbearing interventionist who steered the country back towards economic ruin with her debt-fueled spending sprees.

Under the Kirchners, "Argentina grew addicted to fictitious feel-good growth, spending and selling everything it had to keep the positive feelings going," an editorial in the Harvard International Review noted in 2019.