MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former president organizing challenge to Kirchners' power

Former Pte. Eduardo Duhalde

Former Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde said his counterpart Nestor Kirchner suffers a profound “psychological impairment” and compared a recent speech of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner husband to those from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

"When (Kirchner) spoke at the foot of Congress he used a language which made me recall speakers such as the Fuhrer or Mussolini", said the former caretaker president (2002/03) interviewed by a broadcasting station in the province of Santa Fe. Duhalde was referring to a speech from the current chairman of the ruling Justicialista Party last July, during a political rally before a crucial vote in the Senate over the controversial sliding farm export taxes which was the culmination of a four months stand off between the government and Argentine farmers. During his speech Kirchner (2002/2007) repeatedly accused farmers of destabilizing the government, coup mongers and of having organized hit gangs (task groups) similar to those prevalent during the blackest years of the Argentine military dictatorship which were responsible for random killings and kidnapping. The Argentine Senate finally rejected the tax initiative, the controversial resolution 125, which triggered the first real political challenge to the Mrs. Kirchner's administration who took office last December 10. Former president Eduardo Duhalde has been lately organizing dissenting figures and groups inside the ruling Justicialista party hoping to pose a real challenge to the Kirchners in next year's mid term elections, ahead of the presidential election of 2011. Duhalde's group is called the Argentine Productive Movement with offices next to Congress and regularly visits governors, mayors, legislators and grass root leaders to knit a winning opposition. He's positioned more to the center than the Kirchners, a growing feeling among Argentine public opinion which is increasingly irritated with organized pickets, rampant crime and radical groups that absorb the government's agenda. One of his close aides is quoted by the Buenos Aires media saying that before the political leaders of metropolitan Buenos Aires, the stronghold of the Justicialista party would become desperate if "Kirchner didn't ring them, but now their desperation emerges if Duhalde doesn't call them or invite them".