Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s former president and one of many nation’s most polarizing political figures, was sentenced to jail on Tuesday and barred for all times from public workplace after the Supreme Court docket upheld her corruption conviction.
The ruling is prone to deepen political tensions within the nation and comes after Mrs. Kirchner, who was the goal of an assassination try three years in the past, introduced plans for a political comeback.
Supporters blocked key highways across the capital, Buenos Aires, forward of the court docket choice in opposition to the left-leaning Mrs. Kirchner, who has clashed repeatedly with Argentina’s right-wing president, Javier Milei, whereas main labor unions had threatened nationwide strikes.
The Supreme Court docket rejected an enchantment by Mrs. Kirchner, cementing a six-year sentence handed down by a decrease court docket that had discovered she defrauded the state throughout her two phrases as president, from 2007 to 2015.
Nonetheless, Mrs. Kirchner, 72, is unlikely to serve important jail time as Argentine legislation usually permits home arrest for these over 70. The decrease court docket will decide if Mrs. Kirchner will get residence detention.
The previous president might be held behind bars at a police station for a number of days till a choose approves her residence detention, mentioned Andrés Gil Domínguez, a constitutional legislation professor on the College of Buenos Aires.
A fixture in Argentine politics for greater than three a long time, Mrs. Kirchner stays a divisive determine. Whereas a lot of the nation views her presidency as synonymous with financial mismanagement and corruption, she continues to command a loyal base that credit her with expansive social packages.
Mrs. Kirchner, who was additionally vice chairman from 2019 to 2023, has confronted quite a few expenses of corruption. She was convicted in 2022 of steering public roadworks contracts in a southern province to a household pal and enterprise affiliate.
Mrs. Kirchner has denounced the costs as politically motivated, accusing opponents of weaponizing the judiciary to curb her affect.
The court docket decided that the scheme had started beneath her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, and continued throughout her two presidential phrases. He had been governor of southern Santa Cruz Province and served as president from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Kirchner died in 2010.
Since 2024, she has led the Justicialist Occasion, the primary opposition pressure to Mr. Milei and the most important political platform for Peronism, the populist, nationalist motion that has formed a lot of Argentina’s trendy political historical past.
Mr. Milei has steadily blamed Mrs. Kirchner, in addition to her husband, for years of financial mismanagement and systemic corruption that despatched the nation right into a downward financial spiral. Mr. Milei received workplace in 2023 by vowing to slash public spending and overhaul Argentina’s state-heavy economic system.
Mrs. Kirchner not too long ago introduced that she was operating for a seat within the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in elections this yr. She would have been a heavy favourite, and a victory would have granted her immunity from serving the sentence.
“Coincidence shouldn’t be a political class,” Mrs. Kirchner informed supporters on Monday as she ready for the choice from Argentina’s highest court docket. “It solely took us asserting a candidacy every week in the past for the demons to be unleashed.”
She characterised efforts to imprison her as a method to quiet her criticism of Mr. Milei’s right-wing financial insurance policies, which have included broad austerity measures.
“Go forward, throw me in jail,” she mentioned Monday. “Do you actually imagine this may repair something? I could be behind bars, however folks can be worse off by the day.”
Throughout Mrs. Kirchner’s trial in 2022, supporters gathered outdoors her Buenos Aires condo each day to indicate solidarity.
In September of that yr, a person on the entrance to her constructing pointed a loaded pistol at her head at shut vary. The weapon jammed, and she or he was unhurt. The accused gunman and two others are detained and going through trial.
The previous president faces a number of different authorized points, together with accusations of cash laundering, orchestrating a corruption scheme involving public works and conspiring with Iran to cowl up its suspected function within the 1994 bombing of a Jewish group heart in Buenos Aires that killed 85 folks.
