Argentines mourn ex-president

Thousands of shocked Argentines gathered early today to pay tribute to former president Nestor Kirchner, who died suddenly of a heart attack.

His wife and current president Cristina Fernandez now faces the prospect of running for re-election without her closest adviser.

Mr Kirchner, 60, who steered Argentina out of crisis and political instability with a left-wing populism that thrilled the poor and exasperated the wealthy, died with his wife by his side.

His death abruptly ends a plan the couple had to keep succeeding each other and holding on to power for many years.

With next year’s elections looming, Ms Fernandez will have to run for re-election without the charismatic party leader who kept a tight lid on the country’s unruly political scene.

Mr Kirchner had a history of heart trouble, undergoing emergency surgery on his carotid artery in February and an angioplasty in September, but refused to slow down, campaigning daily to lay the political groundwork for another run at the presidency by him or his wife.

He suffered another heart attack early yesterday and was pronounced dead at 9.15am local time after efforts to revive him failed.

Shocked Argentines filled Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo outside the presidential palace.

“He’s someone who for the first time in our democracy, turned his politics toward the workers and the people. That’s why so many are here. The plaza shows that the people will support and deepen his model,” said Juan Pablo Mazzieri, 39.

Ms Fernandez, he said “has the capacity to go it alone with all the people’s support”.

But Mr Kirchner’s death leaves a gaping hole in Argentine politics.

While Ms Fernandez is a powerful figure in her own right, Mr Kirchner was seen as the heir to Argentine general Juan Peron, the legendary strongman whose advocacy for workers brought generations into the middle class.

Like Peron, he tolerated few challengers, keeping in check the nation’s unions, activist groups, governors and mayors – political players who move thousands of voters and whose allegiance is vital to maintaining public order.

One of his latest campaign promises was to support a union movement effort to require all large businesses to open their books to the unions and turn 10% of their profits over to the workers. Giving them half the profits would be better still, he suggested.

“After Peron and Eva Peron, nobody has done so much for the workers as Nestor Kirchner,” said Hugo Moyano, Argentina’s most powerful union leader, who now doubles as a Peronist party leader in Buenos Aires province.

Mr Kirchner was governor of a thinly populated southern state when he was pulled from relative obscurity to become a presidential candidate in 2003, a time when Argentina was struggling to emerge from a devastating economic crisis.

He captured just 22% of a first-round vote despite the outgoing president’s support and took office after his rival then dropped out.

Within just a few years, he had re-established Argentina’s all-powerful presidency and become a major figure in Latin American politics, abandoning the “Washington consensus” of tight fiscal policies and free trade, isolating the country from foreign debt markets and imposing stringent controls on the flow of money and goods in and out of the country.

Argentina’s economy grew by more than 8% a year during his presidency, enabling him to cancel most of the country’s world-record debt default and pay off £5.7bn in loans from the International Monetary Fund, whose guidance he blamed for ruining economies around the globe.

Then, at the height of his popularity in 2007, he stepped aside, enabling his wife to succeed him and setting the stage for what many hoped or feared would be a leftist dynasty in which husband and wife would take turns as president into the future, side-stepping constitutional limits on re-election.

Without her husband, Ms Fernandez is likely to face new threats from the left and right.