Americas

Home page

Americas

Argentine president says she will seek re-election

22 June 2011 04:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez announced on Tuesday that she will seek re-election, ending months of speculation about her political plans, APA reports quoting news.yahoo.com website.

In a nationally televised address, Fernandez told the nation, "We are once again going to go submit ourselves" to the vote.

"I always knew what I had to do because I’ve always had a high sense of political responsibility and what must be done," said Fernandez, who succeeded her late husband Nestor Kirchner in the presidency in 2007.

Polls indicate Fernandez lacks majority support in Argentina, but might easily win re-election in the Oct. 23 first-round vote against a divided opposition.

The president’s plans have been a subject of speculation due to rumored health issues and her public silence on her political future.

In her speech Tuesday, the 58-year-old president said she had planned on waiting closer to the end of the candidacy registration period before announcing.

The candidate of the Peronist party will face challenges from Ricardo Alfonsin, the son of ex-President Raul Alfonsin, and fellow Peronist ex-President Eduardo Duhalde, among others.

Fernandez’s first-round election victory in October 2007 was widely attributed to the support of her popular husband, whom many Argentines credited with reviving the country after its 2001-2002 economic collapse.

Fernandez, however, had already built a political career on her own terms, winning a legislative seat in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz in 1991 when her husband became the province’s governor. Fernandez later represented the remote province in the national Senate and Chamber of Deputies.

Political analysts speculated after her presidential win that the power couple planned to alternate four-year terms in the Casa Rosada, the country’s presidential palace, thanks to Argentine laws letting presidents serve unlimited, non-consecutive terms. Argentine law does allow presidents to serve two consecutive terms.

Such speculation ended in October 2010, when her husband died of heart failure at age 60. Fernandez has since taken to wearing black at public events and delivering emotional homages to her late-husband.

Her administration has had its rocky moments, most notably a nationwide strike that halted farm production in 2008 to protest government grain export tariffs. Fernandez had imposed the tariffs to try and force farmers to sell more of its production domestically and dampen rising food prices.

The farm conflict handed the president a major loss after her own vice president, Julio Cobos, cast the deciding vote in the Senate defeating the export tariff package. In her announcement Tuesday, Fernandez did not reveal whom she would choose as her vice presidential running mate.

Fernandez’s government has also struggled to contain inflation, which unofficial estimates have shown at times topping 20 percent.

At the same time, her administration has overseen a continuation of the impressive economic growth notched by her husband’s government. The World Bank estimates Argentina’s economy will expand by 6.3 percent this year, second only behind Peru in Latin America.

Her government has also won support with public aid programs targeting the country’s poorest and its championing of ongoing human rights prosecutions of officials in the country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Fernandez has also advocated paying off the country’s sovereign debts and supported legalizing same-sex marriage.