Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner (Spanish pronunciation: [kɾisˈtina eˈlisaβet feɾˈnandes ðe ˈkiɾʃneɾ] ^ⓘ; born Cristina Elisabet Fernández, 19 February 1953), often referred to by her initials CFK, is an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and later as vice president of Argentina from 2019 to 2023 under President Alberto Fernández, as well as the first lady of Argentina during the tenure of her husband, Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 to 2007. She was the second female president of Argentina (after Isabel Perón) and the first elected female president of Argentina. Ideologically, she identifies herself as a Peronist and a progressive, with her political approach called Kirchnerism.

Born in La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, she studied law at the University of La Plata, and moved to Patagonia with her husband Néstor Kirchner upon graduation. She was elected to the provincial legislature; her husband was elected mayor of Río Gallegos. She was elected national senator in 1995, and had a controversial tenure, while her husband was elected governor of Santa Cruz Province. In 1994, she was also elected to the constituent assembly that amended the Constitution of Argentina. She was the First Lady from 2003 to 2007 after her husband was elected president.

Néstor Kirchner did not run for reelection. Instead, his wife was the candidate for the Front for Victory alliance, becoming president in the 2007 presidential election. Her first term of office started with a conflict with the agricultural sector, and her proposed taxation system was rejected. After this she nationalised private pension funds, and fired the president of the Central Bank. The price of public services remained subsidised and she renationalised energy firm YPF as a result. The country had good relations with other South American nations, and strained relations with the western bloc as part of the regional political movement known as pink tide. She also continued her husband's human rights policies, and had a rocky relationship with the press. Néstor Kirchner died in 2010, and she was re-elected for a second term in 2011. She won the 2011 general election with 54.11% of the votes, the highest percentage obtained by any presidential candidate since 1983. The 37.3% difference between votes for hers and the runner-up ticket Binner-Morandini was the second largest in the history of Argentine general elections. She established currency controls during her second term, and the country fell into sovereign default in 2014. She left office in 2015 with approval ratings above 50%.

During her two terms as president, several corruption scandals took place and subsequently her government faced several demonstrations against her rule. She was charged for fraudulent low price sales of dollar futures, and later acquitted. In 2015, she was indicted for obstructing the investigation into the 1994 AMIA Bombing, after Alberto Nisman's controversial accusation of a purported "pact" (a memorandum) signed between her government and Iran which was supposedly seeking impunity for Iranians involved in the terrorist attack. In 2017, an arrest warrant issued by Claudio Bonadio for Fernández de Kirchner charged her with "treason", but due to her parliamentary immunity, she did not go to prison, and the treason accusation was later dropped, while other charges related to Nisman's accusation remained. In 2018, she was also indicted for corruption on charges alleging that her administration had accepted bribes in exchange for public works contracts. On 30 September 2020, the federal criminal cassation court confirmed the corruption trials of Fernández de Kirchner, ruling the former president's objections to be inadmissible. After analyzing the claims of the defendants in the case for the never-ratified Memorandum with Iran, on 7 October 2021, the Federal Oral Court 8 declared the case null and void. The judges concluded that there was no crime in the signing of the agreement with Iran, and declared a judicial dismissal of Cristina Kirchner and the other defendants. On 6 December 2022, she was sentenced to six years in prison and a lifetime ban from holding public office for corruption, and has stated her intention to appeal the verdict.