MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: Kirchner Set to Become Argentine Leader

Nestor Kirchner, a little-known governor from Patagonia, faces tough decisions on the nation's faltering economy when he takes office Sunday as Argentina's sixth president in 18 months.

A lanky, 53-year-old Peronist politician, Kirchner comes to the presidency with the weakest mandate in Argentine history. He was thrust into office after former President Carlos Menem withdrew from a runoff earlier this month.

"I didn't vote for him (earlier) but he's got my support ? for now," said Jorge Fernandez, a 46-year-old newspaper advertising executive. "We've got no choice but to rally around him if we want try to move forward."

Kirchner, whose inauguration will be attended by most of Latin America's presidents, succeeds President Eduardo Duhalde, who was appointed by Congress in January 2001 after a revolving door of five presidents in two weeks.

He will also be the first popularly elected president since Fernando De la Rua, who took office in December 1999. De la Rua was forced to resign two years later amid deadly street riots as the economy unravelled.

Since winning the presidency, Kirchner, a three-term governor of the sparsely populated Santa Cruz province, has lashed out at U.S.-backed free market reforms and promised a multibillion-dollar public works program to jump-start the economy.

But his economic plan remains vague for reviving South America's third-largest economy. His challenges include shrinking a bloated public sector and overhauling the country's tax code.

He also must secure a new aid agreement with the International Monetary Fund, reform a battered banking system and renegotiate a large part of Argentina's $141 billion debt.

After five years of grinding recession, Argentina's economy is expected to grow some 4 percent this year. Consumer confidence is showing signs of life and inflation, last year at 41 percent, appears to be levelling off ? indications the worst may have passed.

Rosendo Fraga, an Argentine political analyst, said Kirchner may face a short honeymoon. Many lawmakers, whose support he'll need to pass legislation, are up for election later this year.

Kirchner's surge to the national stage will test him in ways his 12 years as the leader of a sparsely populated province never did. His supporters point to his three terms as governor as showing he is up to the challenge, and they note Santa Cruz's low unemployment rate, new hospitals, and budget surpluses.

But he has been criticized for what some critics call his heavy-handed control of the province in the style of the political strongmen known here as caudillos.

As governor, Kirchner rallied congressional support to rewrite the province's constitution allowing him to run for an unprecedented third term.

Critics also contend his province of oil men and sheep herders has been built into a state-dependent economy where the largest employer is the government ? giving work to more than two-thirds of its 200,000 people. Leopoldo Kalmus, owner of the Tiempo Sur newspaper in Santa Cruz, insisted Kirchner did little to develop the province's economy besides cashing in on its abundant oil revenues.

"What kind of progressive economy can he talk about when there is hardly any industry and it survives on petroleum royalties?" he said.