Argentina between an unknown political dimension. Cristina Kirchner must decide before Wednesday where she will turn six years in house prison, a benefit that corresponds to her for being over 70 years. And he firm the conviction for corruption of two first and second instance courts. That goes dam is as relevant as the second part of the sentence: Kirchner was disabled for life to be a candidate for public offices, that is, he can no longer participate in elections. But there is not, much less, out of politics. The Court’s ruling has awakened with a shake to Peronism that was not yet recovered from the defeat against Javier Milei in 2023. It is now in active resistance mode, an epic that is better than any other.
Kirchner likes to look in the mirror of in 2018 and 2019 in a case for corruption that in 2021 was annulled by the Supreme Federal Court. But also in Juan Domingo Perón, exiled and banned for 18 years after his overthrow in 1955. Perón managed in absence of Argentine politics since his retirement in Madrid. Politicians, trade unionists, social, intellectual leaders and anyone who wishes to be anointed by the general visited him at Puerta de Hierro and returned to the country with the good news. It is expected now that Kirchner has his own iron door, but in the province of Buenos Aires, where his electoral bastion is and the fate of his party is played in the October legislative elections.
Kirchner’s prison strengthens his role as the highest leader in the internal one that he maintains with. It is, without the possibility of appeal, a victim “of the Judicial Party”, as the thousands of followers who surpassed her first at the headquarters of the party and at night in front of her house, in the Barrio de Constitución, where her daughter lives. The conviction, he said, is the product of a political persecution orchestrated by “the economic powers” that Argentina wants to control. He pointed more against the United States than against “that monigote that governs us,” said Javier Milei. “What they are preparing is how to dismantle the popular and political organization that will occur, because history shows that beyond proscription is that the people end up organizing in self -defense. The people always return,” he warned on Monday, when he already gave the sentence against him in the Supreme Court.
He dates back to his years as president of Argentina, between 2007 and 2015. Justice declared her guilty of harming the Argentine State by irregularly granting half a hundred public works to a friendly businessman, Lázaro Báez, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, cradle of Kirchnerism. According to the courts, Báez paid “the unduly obtained benefits” through spurious businesses with “the family businesses of the former president.” Closed legal roads in Argentina, Kirchner only has his case before the Inter -American Court of Human Rights. If the courts fail, the policy always remains.
The conviction had an immediate effect on a party that was divided and, above all, demobilized. Peronist governors who hate Kirchner joined in their support and repudiated the court ruling. Kicillof, once his political son and now his main internal rival, suspended his entire agenda in the province of Buenos Aires to accompany her. “The effects of this are so thick that one would expect to have effects at all levels,” he said, implying that if they intend to stop the ultra -right of freedom, the Milei party, in October, they have no choice but to join. Without Kirchner in the candidate toombola, Kicillof will try to assert the weight of its management in the largest and rich province of the country in the assembly of the lists of national deputies and senators.
In Peronism they were excited on Tuesday with the agitation that the ruling produced in the street. Thousands of people, the majority very young, gathered in front of Kirchner’s house in the capital. “Argentines, the JP returned,” they sang, for the acronym of the Peronist youth, which not a few gave for almost missing. Every so often, Kirchner appeared to the balcony and greeted. There were also spontaneous demonstrations in the main cities of the country, such as Córdoba, Rosario and La Plata. It is expected that the shots of the faculties of philosophy and letters and social sciences of the UBA will be replicated in other university venues.
Kirchner has as many followers as detractors. I idolize it or hate it deeply, but no one doubts that it has been the most influential political figure of the last 20 years. She was a deputy, senator, twice president and a vice president. Together with her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner, who died in 2010, began in Argentina a long period of hegemony of “left -wing Peronism”, contradicts ultraliberal peronism that Menem had represented in the 1990s. After the Interregno of Mauricio Macri in 2015, Kirchnerism returned to power in 2019, with Alberto Fernández. The president soon breaking with Kirchner, his vice, and everything ended in a disaster. The doors were open for Milei’s ultra -right, which arrived at the Casa Rosada proclaiming the death of “La Casta” first and “Los Kukas” later.
“Justice. End,” he celebrated in his Networks Milei, on a tour of Israel, minutes after the judicial resolution was known. And then it was lost in the subject that these days obsess it on anything else: the press. “The Republic works and all periodi $ ta corrupt $, complicit politician $ Mentiro $ or $, have been exposed in their operetta $ about the alleged impunity pact,” he wrote. Little more were from Casa Rosada. The chief of ministers, Guillermo Francos, the least vociferous voice of the cabinet, said it was “a sad moment to see a twice president, former vice president and senator sentenced to prison.”
Without Kirchner among competitors, Milei loses the organizing principle of its electoral strategy. The “we” or “they” lose bellows and could cost him expensive in October. Although it is early to measure its impact, if Peronism feels incredible, it is possible that it mobilizes in the polls and provincials held in recent months. Milei will insist on nationalizing the legislative campaign. He will say that not only deputies and senators are chosen, but two country models: one “impoverishing statist” and another that guided by the “forces of heaven” that the State will annihilate and make Argentina a power. You will face a Peronism that, perhaps, finds reasons to battle.
