President of Argentina to Seek Re-election

 BUENOS AIRES (AP) — President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina announced on Tuesday that she will seek re-election, ending months of speculation about her political plans.

In a nationally televised address, Mrs. Kirchner said, ”I always knew what I had to do because I’ve always had a high sense of political responsibility and what must be done.”

Polls indicate that Mrs. Kirchner, 58, who succeeded her husband, Néstor Kirchner, as president in 2007, lacks lacks majority support in Argentina but might easily win re-election in the Oct. 23 first-round vote because the opposition is divided. The president’s plans have been a subject of speculation because of rumored health issues and her public silence on her political future. Her husband died in October of heart failure, at age 60.

Mrs. Kirchner, the candidate of the Peronist party, will face challenges from Ricardo Alfonsin, the son of former President Raúl Alfonsin, and a fellow Peronist, former President Eduardo Duhalde, among others.

Her first-round election victory in October 2007 was widely attributed to the support of her popular husband, whom many Argentines credited with reviving the country after its 2001-2 economic collapse.

At the time, political analysts speculated that the couple planned to alternate four-year terms in the presidency. Argentine laws allow presidents to serve only two consecutive terms but unlimited nonconsecutive terms.

Since her husband’s death, Mrs. Kirchner has been wearing black at public events and delivering emotional homages to him.

Her administration has had its difficulties, most notably a nationwide strike that halted farm production in 2008 to protest government grain export tariffs. Mrs. Kirchner had imposed the tariffs to try to force farmers to sell more of its production domestically and dampen rising food prices. Her own vice president, Julio Cobos, cast the deciding vote in the Senate defeating the export tariff package. The government has also struggled to contain inflation, which unofficial estimates have shown at times as over 20 percent.

At the same time, her administration has overseen a continuation of the impressive economic growth notched by her husband’s government. The World Bank estimates Argentina’s economy will expand by 6.3 percent this year, second only behind Peru in Latin America.

Mrs. Kirchner’s government has also won support with public aid programs aimed at the country’s poorest and its championing of continuing human rights prosecutions of officials in the country’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Mrs. Kirchner has also advocated paying off the country’s sovereign debts and has supported legalizing same-sex marriage.

In her announcement on Tuesday, Mrs. Kirchner did not say who would be her running mate.        

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