Tough term ahead for Argentina's Cristina Fernandez

Argentina does not often experience such a one-sided election.


The votes counted on Sunday only confirmed what had been known for some months - that Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will be the president for another four years.

She will start her second term in office in many ways as a much stronger president than she was four years ago.

Then, many opponents and even some allies, saw her as a stand-in for her husband, Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her in the presidency and was expected to succeed her.

But he died of a heart attack last October, leaving a grieving widow to run the country without his behind-the-scenes support.

However, newspaper editor, Sergio Kiernan, said she was not just Nestor Kirchner's widow.

"She was a senator for many years," he said. "And for many, many years in many ways she was the more prominent of the two. She's always been a politician in her own right and she remains so."

She has fallen out with close aides of her husband and forged her own alliances. The most notable split has been with the head of the powerful trade union movement, Hugo Moyano. He was one of Nestor's most loyal allies, often seen in the front row at political rallies.

But Cristina has shut him out and the struggle is under way within the trade union movement to replace him. Few doubt that the new leader will be more to the liking of the president.

And she has chosen a running mate she gets along with - the guitar-playing, motorbike-riding economy minister, Amado Boudou.

She hardly spoke to her 2007 vice-president, Julio Cobos, after they fell out early on in a bitter dispute with the farming sector over the amount of tax paid on agricultural exports, principally soya.

The lucrative crop was a major factor in helping the economy to recover from the crisis it suffered 10 years ago.

This was despite the poor relations between the farming lobby and, firstly, Nestor then Cristina Fernandez.

So Ms Fernandez's well-publicised lunch with one of the major agricultural groups in the week before polling was, say many analysts, about time and perhaps a sign of maturity on both sides.

BBC news