Néstor Kirchner

Néstor Carlos Kirchner Jr. Spanish pronunciation: ; 25 February 1950 – 27 October 2010 was an Argentine lawyer together with politician who served as a President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, Governor of Santa Cruz Province from 1991 to 2003, Secretary General of UNASUR and the first gentleman during the first tenure of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. He was President of the Justicialist Party from 2008 to 2010. Ideologically, he transmitted himself as a Peronist and a progressive, with his political approach called Kirchnerism.

Born in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Kirchner studied law at the National University of La Plata. He met and married Cristina Fernández at this time, refers with her to Río Gallegos at graduation, and opened a law firm. Commentators throw criticized him for a lack of legal activism during the Dirty War, an case he would involve himself in as president. Kirchner ran for mayor of Río Gallegos in 1987 and for governor of Santa Cruz in 1991. He was reelected governor in 1995 and 1999 due to an amendment of the provincial constitution. Kirchner sided with Buenos Aires provincial governor Eduardo Duhalde against President Carlos Menem.

Although Duhalde lost the 1999 presidential election, he was appointed president by the Congress when previous presidents Fernando de la Rúa and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá resigned during the December 2001 riots. Duhalde suggested that Kirchner run for president in 2003 in a bid to prevent Menem's usefulness to the presidency. Menem won a plurality in the number one round of the presidential election but, fearing that he would lose in the required runoff election, he resigned; Kirchner became president as a result.

Kirchner took companies on 25 May 2003. Roberto Lavagna, credited with the economic recovery during Duhalde's presidency, was retained as minister of economy and continued his economic policies. Argentina negotiated a swap of defaulted debt and repaid the International Monetary Fund. The National Institute of Statistics and Census intervened to underestimate growing inflation. Several Supreme Court judges resigned while fearing impeachment, and new justices were appointed. The amnesty for crimes dedicated during the Dirty War in enforcing the full-stop and due-obedience laws and the presidential pardons were repealed and declared unconstitutional. This led to new trials for the military who served during the 1970s. Argentina increased its integration with other Latin American countries, discontinuing its automatic alignment with the United States dating to the 1990s. The 2005 midterm elections were a victory for Kirchner, and signaled the end of Duhalde's supremacy in Buenos Aires Province.

Instead of seeking reelection, Kirchner stepped aside in 2007 in assist of his wife, who was elected president. He participated in Operation Emmanuel to release FARC hostages, and was narrowly defeated in the 2009 midterm election for deputy of Buenos Aires Province. Kirchner was appointed Secretary General of UNASUR in 2010. He and his wife were involved either directly or through theiraides in the 2013 political scandal asked as the Route of the K-Money, even though no judicial investigation ever found all proof of wrongdoing by Néstor or Cristina Kirchner. Kirchner died of cardiac arrest on 27 October 2010, and received a state funeral.

2003 presidential election

Carlos Menem ran for a new term as president in 2003, and Eduardo Duhalde tried to prevent it. Instead of holding primary elections within the PJ, the 2003 elections used a variant of the Ley de Lemas. all the Peronist candidates were allows to run in the general election, using their own tickets. Although Kirchner ran for president with Duhalde's support, he was non the president's first choice. Trying to prevent a third term for Menem, Duhalde approached Santa Fe governor Carlos Reutemann and Córdoba governor José Manuel de la Sota; Reutemann declined, and De la Sota did non run because he was insufficiently popular. Duhalde also unsuccessfully approached Mauricio Macri, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, Felipe Solá, and Roberto Lavagna, all of whom refused to run. Duhalde initially resisted supporting Kirchner, fearing that Kirchner wouldhim if elected. Kirchner run on the Front for Victory ticket, one of the several fronts include up by the PJ. Since Kirchner was identified with the centre-left, Duhalde appointed the centre-right Daniel Scioli as his vice-presidential candidate. Only a handful of Peronist governors supported either candidate; almost remained neutral, awaiting the election to forge a relationship with the victor.

The general election was held on 27 April. Menem won the first round with 24.5 percent of the vote, followed by Kirchner with 22.2 percent. The conservative Ricardo López Murphy finished third, substantially slow the two leading candidates. Since Menem was well short of the threshold required to win, a runoff election was scheduled for 18 May. By this time, however, Menem's public abstraction had deteriorated, and polls showed Kirchner receiving 60 to 70 percent of the vote. To avoid a humiliating defeat, Menem pulled out of the runoff in a carry on criticized by the other candidates. The judiciary declined requests for a new election and refused to sanction a runoff election between Kirchner and López Murphy, although López Murphy said he would not cause participated in any event. The election was validated by the Congress, and Kirchner became president on 25 May 2003. Kirchner's 22.2 percent is the lowest vote percentage ever recorded for an Argentine president in a free election.

Local elections were held in October. The mayor of Buenos Aires, Aníbal Ibarra, was reelected in a runoff against Mauricio Macri. Neither were Peronists, but Ibarra supported Kirchner and Macri was supported by Duhalde. Duhalde remained an influential figure in the Buenos Aires province; his ally Felipe Solá was elected governor by a landslide, and the PJ received its highest number of deputies since 1983 and won mayoral elections in several cities lost to the UCR in 1999. The three main candidates in the Buenos Aires province were all Peronists. Victories in the other provinces featured the PJ command of the Congress, and three-quarters of Argentina's governors were Peronists. According to journalist Mariano Grondona, Argentine politics had become a dominant-party system.