MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina: A ?penguin' for president

President Néstor Kirchner ? who revels in his avian nickname yesterday announced for the first time that the candidate of the “national concertation” he has called for will be a male or female “penguin,” but stopped short of saying whether he will seek re-election.

During the inauguration of a bridge in Rawson, Chubut, he also said that the candidate will be named shortly before the presidential election scheduled for October 2007.

The President further defined the scope of the "concertation" of political forces he called on May 25, saying that it will not include "repressors" from the 1976-83 military dictatorship, or those who had "ransacked" the nation or opposed the annulment last year of two laws that had given immunity to hundreds of human rights violators.

Government officials had already said that Kirchner's call for a political accord would not include centre-left ARI leader Elisa Carrió ? who has already launched her presidential bid ? or centre-right leaders Mauricio Macri, Ricardo López Murphy or Neuquén Governor Jorge Sobisch.

Kirchner also criticized ? without actually naming him ? his former economy minister Roberto Lavagna who, he said, is one of those "who are concerned with talking about candidacies and presenting themselves as candidates... The fatherland needs work, investments, not candidates."

Kirchner did not elaborate about his "male or female penguin" statement. He has said that his wife, Senator Cristina Fernández, has the qualities to be president. Kirchner sacked Lavagna in November after the then minister criticized some government decisions.

Lavagna has since resumed his criticism of several aspects of the administration's policies, even questioning the President's call for a restricted "concertation."

"Now it seems that we were not that plural," Lavagna said in an interview published yesterday by the La Nacion newspaper, one day after many government officials and pro-Kirchner legislators harshly criticized him.

Lavagna, who had a highly independent profile as a minister, also said that "there is a very restricted autonomy" among government officials.

He has said that he will only talk about candidacies next year but he has met with followers of former Peronist president Eduardo Duhalde. Former Radical president Raul Alfonsín said on Thursday that he would like Lavagna to be the candidate of a coalition of Radicals, a sector of the Peronist party, and Socialists.

Deputy José María Díaz Bancalari, a former supporter of Duhalde who has now joined Kirchner's camp, yesterday warned that Lavagna is launching his candidacy and that he is "making a mistake by undoing what we built together."

Lavagna has been widely credited as weathering Argentina's worst-ever crisis on record and putting the country back on the path of economic growth. He is also credited for his handling of tough negotiations that culminated in Argentina's forcing creditors of bad debt to swallow a 67-billion-dollar "haircut" that reduced the country's debt to 125 billion dollars. Government officials and private experts say that Lavagna failed to keep inflation at bay. Buenos Aires Herald