Nestor Kirchner:NESTOR KIRCHNER, who has died aged 60, was an Argentine power broker who as president from 2003 to 2007 helped guide his country out of a calamitous economic crisis.
His death has plunged South America’s second-largest country into political uncertainty because he had been expected to run for the presidency next year, with many political analysts predicting victory.
Kirchner had decided not to seek re-election in 2007 for reasons that were never made clear. He pushed the candidacy of his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who won in a landslide. But Kirchner was said to wield extraordinary influence on the most important policy decisions. His role in his wife’s government had been so important that the Argentine media referred to the executive branch as a dual presidency, or “Los K”.
The Kirchners were among the most polarising leaders in South America, where they were part of a group of leftist leaders elected over the last decade. Beloved by poorer Argentines for expanding social programs, Kirchner was also reviled as an autocrat who would use the power of the government to weaken rivals.
In 2008, he accused farmers of plotting his wife’s overthrow when they protested over tax hikes. With his wife, he took on Grupo Clarin, a media company that operates the country’s largest newspaper, which has been critical of the political duo. A media decentralisation law approved last year limited the number of broadcast licences that Clarin could hold.
A one-time governor from the sparsely populated and resource-rich Santa Cruz province – in the country’s south – Kirchner was catapulted to the presidency 18 months after Argentina recorded the biggest debt default in history, $95 billion. In a matter of days, the country was locked out of the international credit market, millions of Argentines were plunged into poverty and a series of governments collapsed.
He won office by default, with only 22 per cent of the vote after the front-running candidate, former president Carlos Menem, abandoned his campaign. Kirchner inherited an economy that he called “devastated, pressured and extorted” by international creditors, a grinding recession and the collapse of the Argentine currency.
As he rose to the national stage, the media in Buenos Aires focused on the heavy lisp in his speech and a lazy eye that wandered as he talked.
Kirchner was a strong-willed president who, in the tradition of other Peronist Party leaders, astutely delivered a populist message that won him support as he guided Argentina out of its economic morass.
He blamed the country’s troubles on the International Monetary Fund and American-style economic reforms advanced by Menem. Kirchner spent generously on social programmes and infrastructure. Coupled with a dramatic rise in worldwide demand for Argentine commodities, from soybeans to beef, Argentina’s economy made a fast recovery.
In 2003, the country’s economy grew for the first time in five years.
Nestor Carlos Kirchner, who was of Swiss and Croatian descent, was born in Rio Gallegos, capital of Santa Cruz province in Patagonia. He was nicknamed “the Penguin”, a reflection as much of his uncharismatic personality as of the frigid region from which he came.
Active in the youth wing of the Peronist Party, the populist movement started by its namesake, the strongman Juan Peron, Kirchner was jailed briefly during a brutal 1970s military dictatorship.
In 1976, he graduated from law school at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, south of Buenos Aires, and returned to his province to practise law. He was elected mayor of Rio Gallegos in 1987 and later became governor of Santa Cruz.
Using the financial resources generated from the oil-producing province, he set up housing and healthcare programmes that won him strong backing. He went from governing a province of 200,000 inhabitants to trying to lead a country of 40 million buffeted by its worst crises in decades.
As Argentina’s 54th president, he not only took tough steps on the economy, but strongly supported the judiciary in its efforts to resolve unsolved crimes from a military dictatorship accused of killing and causing the disappearances of up to 30,000 people.
With amnesties overturned, prosecutors in recent years have charged hundreds of former military officers. Dozens have been convicted, including generals who led successive military juntas.
Kirchner and his wife supported efforts to reunite the babies of suspected subversives who were killed with their biological grandparents.
For many Argentines they were considered imperious in their governing style, particularly with opponents. That cost them dearly in a 2008 showdown with Argentina’s most powerful sector, the farmers and ranchers who are the backbone of the economy. That, and revelations that the Venezuelan government had allegedly provided money to Fernandez de Kirchner’s presidential campaign, hurt them in the polls.
But in recent weeks, with Argentina’s economy booming, the Kirchners had an approval rating that topped that of their better-known opponents, according to Buenos Aires pollster Ricardo Rouvier Associates.
Besides his wife, whom he married in 1975, survivors include their two children, son Máximo Kirchner and daughter Florencia Kirchner.
Nestor Kirchner: born February 25th, 1950; died October 27th, 2010