For decades, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner dominated Argentina’s political landscape: as a senator, first lady, president and then vice-president. But on Tuesday she was sentenced to six years in prison in a verdict, which if upheld on appeal, will also ban her from holding public office for the rest of her life.
Fernández immediately announced that she would not run for president, or any other kind of elected office, in the 2023 elections. The court’s ruling appeared to have abruptly sidelined the country’s most powerful – and most polarising – politician since Juan and Eva Perón, leaving many Argentinians wondering: what will come next?
Currently, Fernández enjoys immunity from arrest because of her role as senator and vice-president, and she cannot legally be sent to jail until she has exhausted her appeals – a process which could take years.
The judges who found her guilty of defrauding the state will explain how they arrived at their decision at a hearing on 9 March. At that point Fernández will be able to appeal her conviction, first at the federal criminal cassation chamber and then at the supreme court.
María Esperanza Casullo, professor of political science at Argentina’s National University of Río Negro, said that Fernández was unlikely to spend any time behind bars: the trials and appeals process against recent presidents such as Carlos Menem and Fernando de la Rua took well over a decade. Furthermore, Argentinian prisoners can request to serve the rest of their sentences under house arrest when they turn 70. Fernández de Kirchner is currently 69.
Casullo also highlighted a number of points of controversy in the trial. Argentina’s political system does not automatically impose a lifetime ban on seeking office for this kind of conviction, and in other recent cases, such bans have been for a set period of years. “It seems somewhat disproportionate,” she said.
She also highlighted a recent leak which allegedly showed that a judge investigating the case was among several members of the judiciary and prominent businessmen who were flown by private jet to the Patagonian ranch of the British business magnate Joe Lewis, a friend of the rightwing former president – and bitter Fernández foe – Mauricio Macri.
Meanwhile, Fernández’s announcement that she will not seek public office in 2023 has wide-reaching implications for the nation’s electoral scenario. Argentina is due to hold general elections in November 2023, and she was widely expected to run for the presidency.
Argentina’s current president, Alberto Fernández (no relation to Fernández de Kirchner), served as chief of staff during the 2003-2007 presidency of Fernández de Kirchner’s husband, Néstor Kirchner, and the early days of the Cristina presidency, before breaking with her amid a dispute over agricultural export taxes.
It came as a surprise to many when Cristina announced that Alberto would be the presidential candidate and she his running mate in the 2019 presidential elections, given the pair’s differences and his less prominent political profile.
Amid a worsening economic panorama, deep divides have emerged in their Frente de Todos coalition this year over issues including a March deal to renegotiate a large sovereign debt owed to the IMF. While Alberto has pursued a market-calming, conciliatory strategy, Cristina has pushed for a more hardline approach to the Washington-based lender.
Fernández was president of Argentina between 2007 and 2015, after her husband Néstor left office. Argentina enjoyed growth rates of around 8% per year in the early 2000s, buoyed in part by high commodities prices, and boasted the highest national minimum wage in Latin America. This enabled Kirchnerism to implement a series of policies that favoured the country’s poor, such as providing pensions for housewives, creating a universal child benefit, and opening new public universities.
But she had a fractious relationship and a series of political tussles with agribusiness groups, the judiciary and the mass media.
“She embodied a spirit of redistributive policies … and confrontation with powerful sectors,” Casullo said.
