MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

26 million Argentines ready to vote midterm elections

When President Nestor Kirchner took power over two years ago, one fact clouded his rise to the presidency: he won with the weakest popular mandate for a democratically-elected leader in Argentine history.

Now he hopes to shake off that reputation by clenching a convincing victory in Argentina's legislative elections this Sunday, helped by a booming economy.

Polls show several leading candidates backed by the Argentine leader are expected to emerge as winners in the Sunday vote.

A former governor from a remote Patagonian province, Kirchner, then a political outsider, was catapulted into office in 2003 with just 22 percent of the vote after his Peronist rival, former President Carlos Menem, pulled out of the race.

Since then, Kirchner has worked to strengthen his political base and Sunday's vote will prove the biggest test of his leadership.

For months, he has hit the campaign trail almost daily, announcing public works programs and urging Argentines to rally behind him as he works to lead the country's recovery from a 2001-2002 economic crisis.

An economic upswing has al-ready made Kirchner immensely popular and many Argentines admire him for stamping out corruption in the courts and forging ahead with prosecutions of human rights abusers from the "Dirty War."

He also has won points for his attacks on those often blamed for the crisis ? the International Monetary Fund and foreign investors.

But his biggest contest will be in Buenos Aires province, Argentina's largest and wealthiest, where Kirchner has put forward his wife, Sen. Cristina Fernández, to compete for one of the country's most powerful posts.

Popular among Argentines, she faces the wife of former President Eduardo Duhalde, once a prominent Kirchner backer, but now an avowed enemy in what is being widely seen as a battle for control of the Peronist party.

Recent polls show Cristina Kirchner winning about least 44 percent of the province's vote, far ahead of Hilda Duhalde's 23 percent. Still, both are likely to win Senate offices under election rules awarding seats to the top three vote-getters.

But a stronger showing by Duhalde could allow her and her husband to remain significant political players.

Political observers say Kirchner appears likely to win a positive verdict on his performance during Sunday's vote to renew half of the seats in the 257-member House of Deputies, a third of the 72-member Senate and hundreds of provincial offices.

They say the election may also reveal possible leaders of what has been until now a fragmented opposition.

Elisa Carrio, a leftist former legislator, and Mauricio Macri, a businessman who leads Argentina's most popular soccer club Boca Juniors, are expected to fare well in their bids for congressional seats in the capital, Buenos Aires.