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 more likely to deepen political tensions within the nation and comes after Mrs. Kirchner, who was the goal of an assassination attempt three years in the past, introduced plans for a political comeback.
Supporters blocked key highways across the capital, Buenos Aires, forward of the courtroom resolution towards 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 attraction by Mrs. Kirchner in a 27-page ruling, cementing a six-year sentence handed down by a decrease courtroom 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 age 70. The decrease courtroom, which is able to decide if Mrs. Kirchner will get house detention, mentioned she had 5 enterprise days to current herself earlier than the tribunal to be formally detained. Individually, it requested the safety minister to supply an acceptable place for her detention.
The previous president may very well be held behind bars for a couple of days till a decide approves her house detention, mentioned Andrés Gil Domínguez, a constitutional legislation professor on the College of Buenos Aires.
Mrs. Kirchner instructed supporters outdoors her celebration’s headquarters shortly after the courtroom ruling, “This Argentina we’re residing in at present by no means ceases to shock us.” She known as the three members of the Supreme Court docket “puppets” and characterised them as “a “triumvirate of disgraceful figures” who answered to highly effective financial pursuits, and mentioned they had been now “imposing a clamp on the favored vote.”
As for Mr. Milei, he wrote, “Justice” on X and reposted a number of messages that celebrated the Supreme Court docket’s ruling.
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 charges 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 courtroom decided that the scheme had started below 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 Get together, the principle 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 often 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 gained workplace in 2023 by vowing to slash public spending and overhaul Argentina’s state-heavy economy.
Mrs. Kirchner just lately introduced that she was working for a seat within the Buenos Aires provincial legislature in elections this 12 months. 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 instructed supporters on Monday as she ready for the choice from Argentina’s highest courtroom. “It solely took us saying a candidacy per week in the past for the demons to be unleashed.”
She characterised efforts to imprison her as a option 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 consider this can repair something? I could be behind bars, however individuals can be worse off by the day.”
Throughout Mrs. Kirchner’s trial in 2022, supporters gathered outdoors her Buenos Aires house each day to indicate solidarity.
In September of that 12 months, 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 position within the 1994 bombing of a Jewish neighborhood heart in Buenos Aires that killed 85 individuals.
