Fernández de Kirchner’s present points to Milei’s future

Being an ex-president is unhealthy work. In Argentina, former heads of state generally do very little to change that. Instead of going home to write their memoirs and open foundations to shape and influence their legacy for the history books, they often seek an ongoing role in day-to-day politics, refusing to cede leadership to the next generation. While in other countries, like the United States, a former president can resemble a precious vase no-one knows quite where to put, in Argentina, the vase stubbornly becomes the bull in the china shop.

The Constitution can partly be blamed for that. While in the US, candidates are barred from elected office after two presidential terms, in Argentina they can always come back as long as they are alive. That does not help succession. Their ambitions do not either.

The Senate’s narrow vote this week on the ‘Ficha Limpia’ (“Clean Record”) bill, which saved former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from an electoral ban over her corruption convictions (confirmed in the second instance but not by the Supreme Court), is only the latest example of how Argentina cannot put its past leaders behind it. 

The court trial showed that the Kirchner presidential duo’s decade-plus administration of Argentina was plagued with corruption, especially in the management of public works projects. Fernández de Kirchner was found guilty of orchestrating a scheme to siphon public cash to friendly businessmen. She was sentenced to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from public office. 

An appeals court has confirmed the verdict and the sentence. The Supreme Court must decide whether it will revise the case. If it doesn’t – a decision which will only take the stroke of three pens – Kirchner should immediately go to jail (she won’t, due to her age, 72, making her eligible for house arrest. Recently, Supreme Court Justice Ricardo Lorenzetti said in an interview that the nation’s highest tribunal should rule before the October midterm elections, remarks that drew a rebuke from Fernández de Kirchner.

For incumbents, it is also instrumental to have predecessors active, especially because most of them have fallen on the wrong side of the public. In the late 1980s, Raúl Alfonsín left office early amid hyperinflation. In the late 1990s, Carlos Menem ended his terms amid corruption allegations that would send him to house arrest a year later. His economic Frankenstein project, the convertibility peg, exploded two years later. His successor Fernando de la Rúa resigned midway, not before ordering a state of siege and killing over 30 people. In the early 2000s, Néstor Kirchner served only one term and picked his wife to succeed him to escape lame-duck status. In 2019, Mauricio Macri lost his re-election bid after doubling the inflation he had promised to kill. In 2023, the unpopular Alberto Fernández exited office without even having a go at a second term.

In comparative terms, Fernández de Kirchner seems to be the Argentine president since 1983 who ended in the best shape. Still, President Javier Milei would love to have her around as the leader of the opposition by the time his re-election bid arrives in 2027. Her approval rating ceiling is very low – and would seem to make it next to impossible for her to win a second round run-off.

Fernández de Kirchner is no longer the figure she once was: both her power and public support have steadily slid over the years. During Macri’s Presidency, Argentina’s politics was dominated by two coalitions and the former president was the undisputed leader of the opposition. So much so that she appointed Alberto Fernández to lead a unified Peronist presidential ticket through a social media post and nobody dared to question the call — even though, over time, it proved to be a very bad one.

Macri has not done much better politically. The PRO party he founded over two decades ago is on the verge of extinction now that Milei has become the undisputed leader of Argentina’s centre-right, attracting most of the former president’s votes in the process. Aged 66, Macri is on the ropes, forced to fight a neighbourhood election in Buenos Aires City as if it were a World Cup final, knowing that survival is at stake. 

The former president – who formally lost Patricia Bullrich, his party’s former chair, to Milei’s La Libertad Avanza – whined this week that the current head of state is not giving him and his party their fair share, given the support his people have handed Milei in Congress during his first year in office. “I give more than I get, that’s the story of my life,” lamented Macri.

Like Milei today, Fernández de Kirchner and Macri once believed their power was unlimited and their future bright. The way they engaged with their adversaries only came back later to haunt them. Compared to his predecessors, Milei is being much more aggressive with anybody who opposes him, but there is very little reason to believe he will have a different ending.