Argentine first lady seals power pair's domination

By Helen Popper

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.