Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of the 1970s, enduring confrontations with police and military. He
favored repeal of the amnesty laws by which Menem had defused
the “painted faces” in 1990, and he favored redistributive policies
that sought to dissuade the unemployed from pillaging the halls of
power. Governor Kirchner of Santa Cruz Province campaigned like
a populist. Moreover, he gained the support of President Duhalde,
who was gaining respect for his even-tempered interim rule. Several
other candidates of splinter parties entered the sweepstakes, such
as Senator Elisa Carrió, the first woman to run for the presidency.
Menem won a small plurality in the first voting but not the 45 per-
cent needed for outright election. He was forced into a two-person
runoff election with the second-place finisher, the
santacruzano
Néstor Kirchner. Now better known, Kirchner attracted many of the
non-Menem voters, and polls indicated that the governor of Santa
Cruz would beat the former president by a wide—even humiliat-
ing—margin. Menem did the noble thing: He dropped out of the race
and spared the nation this added expense of democracy.
As president, Néstor Kirchner had four years to consolidate his
position in the Justicialist Party. The elections also confirmed the
party's control of congress and that the majority of governors were
peronistas
as well. Nevertheless, the congress had bequeathed emer-
gency powers on both Duhalde and Kirchner. As president, Néstor
Kirchner governed by issuing 249 decrees while sending only 176
bills to congress—one of which gave the president “superpowers”
to allocate budgeted funds as he pleased without congress's express
approval. “The superpowers plus the DNUs [decrees of necessity and
urgency] mean congress has ceased to exist,” observed one political
scientist (“Kirchner's True Colours”). He also sought to reduce the
influence of the two main party stalwarts, former presidents Menem
and Duhalde. An investigation of corruption that threatened to
involve Menem forced him to move to Chile, the home of his wife.
The showdown with Duhalde came in the congressional elections
of 2006. Kirchner's wife, First Lady Cristina Fernández, ran for the
Senate in Buenos Aires Province, against another former first lady of
the same party, Hilda “Chiche” Duhalde. Cristina won convincingly,
though Chiche Duhalde joined the Senate, too, as each province
since the 1994 constitutional reform has three senators. Kirchner
continued currying favor with unemployed groups, one of the largest
of which embraced
kirchnerismo
. Its leader, Luis D'Elía, briefly took
a government job.
