CFK: no 2019 run if I’m ‘an obstacle to winning’
Former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner drew attention this week when broke with her recent political conventions and gave a rare interview to Infobae journalist Luis Novaresio, who proceeded to ask the Unidad Ciudadana some of the toughest questions she has faced from the press in a long time.
Even more than the novelty of answering such uncomfortable questions about the suspicious death of the late AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman or corruption in general, perhaps the biggest takeaway from the interview came when Fernández de Kirchner ruled herself out of the 2019 presidential race should she become “an obstacle to winning.” The stance contrasted sharply with her open letter earlier in the week calling on all other opposition forces to unite behind her senatorial candidacy in next month’s midterms. But some pundits saw both this open letter and the more flexible attitude to interviews as a tactical adjustment following recently adverse opinion polls in that senatorial race in Buenos Aires province.
Yet this new approach did not translate into a softer line toward the Mauricio Macri administration, which she accused of undermining the rule of law and pursuing austerity policies which were destroying jobs and the social fabric in general. Among the alleged attacks on the rule of law she listed the existence of political prisoners, among whom she included the jailed Jujuy social leader Milagro Sala, and the case of Santiago Maldonado, the 28-year-old artisan now missing for over six weeks.
On the question of Nisman’s death, the former president seemed to point the finger at Diego Lagomarsino as the owner of the gun that ended the prosecutor’s life. She also defended the controversial 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, describing it as perfectly constitutional.
Asked about corruption in general and the infamous case of former Public Works secretary José López (who was arrested in mid-2016 after tossing bags containing some US$9 million over a convent wall) in particular, Fernández de Kirchner replied that no official should be criticised ahead of a conviction in court. But she expressed indignation over the López case while stressing that it was essential to know where his money came from.
On questions concerning her current and future candidacies, the former president insisted that she was “a Peronist” and not “a leftist,” despite having ducked out of the Justicialist Party primaries to head her own list and said that she had not wanted to run for Senate but had been drafted as the candidate mostly likely to win.
Finally, while self-criticism was not a strong point of an interview lasting almost two hours, she did question her decision to shun Macri’s inauguration as well as the “tone” of some of her presidential nationwide broadcasts between 2007 and 2015.