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Add to FavoritesCristina Fernandez is the presidential candidate for the Front for Victory, the electoral alliance which helped elect President Nestor Kirchner in 2003.
In a democracy like the Argentine Republic, any person who meets the constitutional requirements should be allowed to stand up as a candidate for office. Although there are certainly a lot of questions being asked about who would actually wield power in a Fernandez government, it really is not up to the courts, electoral commissions or even the press to decide whether Ms. Fernandez should have the opportunity to form a government, it is up to the voters.
Nothing in the constitution bars the spouse of an incumbent from running for his or her office once he or she leaves it. Without a specific constitutional reason why she is not eligible to run, Cristina Fernandez should be allowed to make her case to the electorate that she will be a good President for them. It is the right of the voters to decide, within constitutional guidelines, who they want to lead them. The whole point of a democracy is to trust the people to know their own best interests.
Whether or not she is ever President, and whether or not she is an effective President, the voters of Argentina have a right to choose (or refuse) Cristina Fernandez as their President at the polls.
Learn more about this author, David Thill.
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No
It is unfortunate for me to say this, as women happen to be a great majority in the people I befriend and respect, but Latin America has an unfortunate tendency of having had a marred history of female rulers.
In Panama, the very idea of electing a female president after Mireya Moscoso's election has now become practically extinct. In South and Central America, most, if not all female presidents were overthrown, deposed, or forced into resignation. The only country in Latin America to have elected a female president and held onto her was Nicaragua, and her shining moment was dealing with the military after concluding a truce that ended a ten-year war.
So why not women? Well, the problem with most of the female presidents we have seen is that they are, for the most part, extremely militant for the few issues that truly matter to them, and fail to see that while they -are- in power, they first have to run many of their decisions through -men-. What happens then? Well, most of the president's decrees that need Parliamentary consent get voided, and the few that don't irritate the hard-liner population that believe in democratic process.
Even more problematic for Fernandez is the problem that their last female president, Isabel Pern, was overthrown by the military, with absolutely no violent repercussions. So, given that, would you truly believe that Fernandez has a chance of running, never mind -winning-?
Learn more about this author, Richard Ballard.
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