Cristina Fernández de Kirchner airs gripes, but accepts Axel Kicillof’s electoral advance

Former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sought reconciliation with Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof Monday by announcing her support for his bill to advance this year’s elections in the district.

As national chair of the Partido Justicialista, the largest party in the opposition Peronist coalition, Fernández de Kirchner, 72, had pushed for the region’s elections to remain aligned with the national vote.

But Kicillof – who served as economy minister in Fernández de Kirchner’s 2007-2015 government – decided to break with his political mentor and go it alone.

Despite the disagreement, the ex-president has now backed down.

Although considering it a "political error," Fernández de Kirchner said Monday she asked her supporters to back the governor’s initiative to hold the midterm provincial elections in September, a month before the national level.

In an extensive message posted on her social media accounts, Fernández de Kirchner’s opinion was that it "did not seem the most advisable to allocate ample funds to vote twice with a difference of barely six weeks."

The former president stated that while she continues believing "advancing the elections in Buenos Aires Province” is “a political error," she has asked the heads of the provincial legislative caucuses of the political party she chairs "to desist from the electoral bill calling on the Buenos Aires Province citizenry to vote only once."

“Today, April 14, I continue to believe, together with other comrades, that in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Buenos Aires Province, both national and provincial, that the best thing for Buenos Aires Province in general and for Peronism in particular would be to vote just once on October 26.

“In other words, concurrent elections such as have been held for over 40 years since the advent of democracy and under administrations of different political parties,” expressed the former president in a lengthy message on her official X account.

Fernández de Kirchner continued that “it would be better for the people of Buenos Aires Province in general because voting twice with a difference of barely six weeks between one election and the other while at the same time destining ample funds to advance the elections does not seem the most advisable.”

She added: “Above all, in the context of the economic difficulties of every kind being undergone by society as the product of [Javier] Milei’s policies.”

Pointing to the problems facing the nation’s largest electoral battleground, Fernández de Kirchner highlighted that “over 1,000 public works are paralysed while the province accounts for eight out of every 10 newly unemployed, economic activity has fallen eight points year-on-year, consumer spending has undergone its worst slump since 2016 and 11 points of Federal Revenue-Sharing [funds] have been lost.”

– TIMES/NA