Argentine first lady seals power pair's domination
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Some call her the new Evita or Latin America's Hillary Clinton. But Argentina's Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is the first of the famous first ladies to be elected to the top job.
Fernandez won a clear victory at the polls on Sunday to become Argentina's first elected woman president and tighten the grip of the latest power couple to dominate the South American country's politics.
Fernandez is often compared to Eva "Evita" Peron, the charismatic wife of former President Juan Peron who captured the world's attention more than half a century ago.
Like Evita, Fernandez is known for rousing speeches, an eyecatching wardrobe and a strong influence on her husband, President Nestor Kirchner. Beyond that, they have little in common.
But the parallels with Clinton are striking: both are lawyers and senators and married to former governors who became presidents. Clinton is now a front-runner Democratic candidate for next year's U.S. presidential election.
As a prominent senator, Fernandez was better known than Kirchner for many years and she does not ooze the common touch, more often addressing business chiefs or foreign leaders than kissing babies in shantytowns.
She played up her career achievements and intellectual clout on the campaign trail, perhaps wary of critics who dub her "Kirchner in a skirt".
"I don't want to inherit anything from Eva, or from Kirchner. Everything I've got is a result of my own achievements, and my own defects too," she has said.
STORMY YEARS
Fernandez met Kirchner when she got into politics as a student activist in the stormy years preceding the country's "dirty war", during which up to 30,000 people were killed in a military dictatorship's crackdown on leftist dissent.
After friends were kidnapped in the escalating violence in her home city of La Plata, the couple moved south to his chilly Patagonian homeland where they set up a real estate law firm and saved money to fund their political ambitions.
Since then, they have taken turns in the limelight, and she has never been far from her husband's ear since he took office in 2003 on the ashes of a devastating economic crisis.
He is expected to be a powerful figure in a small circle of her trusted advisors.
"This couple are like a magnificent two-headed beast ... They don't share the stage; they share the project," former Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa once said of the power pair.
But even if few doubt Kirchner's influence will continue at the pink presidential palace, differences are expected.
Seen as less patient than her husband when it comes to building consensus, Fernandez's negotiating skills could be put to the test as inflation fuels wage demands and price control accords come under pressure.
However, she is more respectful of protocol and diplomacy and is expected to bolster Argentina's neglected international presence, which could bring with it greater investment flows.
A hard-working mother-of-two with a keen eye for detail, she is said to be bossy and occasionally quick-tempered.
"She's an obsessive and impetuous person who likes everything to be just so," said Jose Angel Di Mauro, author of a book about the first lady. "If you're talking to her and you pick up a book from the coffee table, she'll move it back to exactly where it was beforehand."
Her heavy make-up and expensive clothes sometimes attract more attention than her policies, but Fernandez shrugs off criticism that she is overly image-conscious.
"I've always got dressed up, caked on the make-up," she said in an interview last week. "Would I have to dress like I was poor in order to be a good political leader?"
