MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cristina Kirchner's support plummets 30 points since January

Pte. Cristina Fernadez and her husband former Pte. Nestor Kirchner

The protracted conflict with the farmers and growing inflation demolished in two months the support for Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner according to the latest public opinion poll from the consultants Poliarquía released on Thursday.

The positive image of Mrs. Kirchner plummeted to 26% in May from 47% in March, 36% in April, and thirty points less than at mid January. Furthermore for the first time since taking office in December 2007, the negative image of the Argentine president is above the positive image with 34%. "The conflict with the camp added to the growing concern about the inflationary process and caused a speed up in the change of people's humor that first began to be felt in late 2007", said Alejandro Cattenberg director of Poliarquia. Only 6% of interviews replied they have a "very good image" of President Cristina Kirchner while 20% said they have a "good" opinion of her. Mrs. Kirchner took office on December 10th after having won October elections in the first round with 45.29% of the vote. Another 38% of interviews said they had a "poor" image of the President and 34%, "bad" or "very bad", while the rest did not answer. Therefore the positive image "experienced a descent of ten points since the last poll in April and thirty points so far this year", points out the report. "For the first time in many years the people assess the country's situation with pessimism: a majority believes that the country is not going through a good moment, that the situation is worth than a year ago and that the situation will worsen in the future", adds the report. However the image of former president and husband Nestor Kirchner has remained virtually unchanged in spite of the farmers' conflict: he lost six points in the last two months and remains with a positive image of 49% in May. "This way, Nestor Kirchner remains as one of Argentina's best rated leaders. The different public image ratings of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner "enable us to speak of a de-coupling process of their images" concludes the report by Catterberg.