Argentina, Latin America: Week in Review

Argentina: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Wins Landslide Election

October 24, 2011 By Staff

Today in Latin America

Top Story — Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won a second term as Argentina’s president Sunday in a landslide election. She sailed to victory by the largest margin in the country’s history since returning to democracy in 1983, with 53 percent of the votes after 24 percent of polling stations had been tallied nationwide. Fernández Kirchner’s nearest challenger, socialist candidate Hermes Binner, garnered just 17 percent. By evening, Argentina’s Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo predicted the president’s vote share would rise as votes from her stronghold in Buenos Aires had still yet to be counted. Thousands of supporters rallied in the capital’s famed Plaza de Mayo in support of the only woman to be re-elected president in Latin America. Fernández de Kirchner appealed to the memory of her husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, who died almost a year ago. “In this world where they have criticized us so forcefully, all this makes me feel very proud, that we’re on the right track,” Fernández de Kirchner said, while voting in her husband’s hometown of Rio Gallegos in Patagonia. Kirchner “would be very content,” she added.

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