Argentine president strolls to re-election victory
Argentina's centre-leftist president, Cristina Fernandez, won a landslide re-election victory on Sunday as voters credited her unconventional policies for a long economic boom.
The result marks a dramatic change of fortunes for a leader who some critics once said might have to leave power early as angry protests by farmers and middle-class voters battered her approval ratings soon after she took office.
With votes in from 96 percent of polling stations, Fernandez had almost 54 percent of the vote with a massive lead of 36 percentage points over her nearest rival, socialist candidate Hermes Binner.
No Argentine leader has won such a big share of the vote since General Juan Domingo Peron was elected for the third time with 62 percent in 1973.
"If any one of us had said this was possible two years ago, they would have told us we were crazy," a tearful Fernandez, 58, told thousands of supporters who packed the downtown square that lies before the pink presidential place in Buenos Aires.
"There's a lot left to do, but if anyone had seen this country before 2003, they'd realize how much progress we've made," Fernandez said in a speech laden with references to her late husband and presidential predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, who governed from 2003 to 2007.
When Kirchner died of a heart attack a year ago, many thought it spelled the end of the couple's idiosyncratic blend of state intervention, hefty welfare spending, nationalist rhetoric and the championing of human rights.
Instead, it prompted an outpouring of sympathy for a woman who suddenly seemed more likable and recognition of Kirchner's role in helping the country back on its feet after a sharp economic crisis in 2001/02 that plunged millions into poverty and culminated in the biggest debt default in history.
Despite double-digit inflation and other signs of strain as global conditions worsen, Argentina's economy is growing at about 8 percent a year and the country has regained some of its glory as the "breadbasket of the world" as grains shipments rise. Unemployment is at a 20-year low.
Comments