MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK's son says former President not likely to run for Casa Rosada in 2023

“I believe that Cristina will not be a candidate,” Máximo Kirchner said

Argentine Deputy Máximo Kirchner Monday said that his mother, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) is not likely to run for president in the 2023 elections.

“I believe that Cristina will not be a candidate,” Kirchner said.

According to recent polls, the former head of state (2007-2015) has a negative image (or a ceiling) above 50%. In other words, more than half of Argentina's voters would not choose her over any other candidate of any other party in case of a runoff. It was also rumored that she would instead vie for a national Senatorial seat on behalf of the Province of Buenos Aires, for which she would have enough support to remain a beneficiary of parliamentary immunity.

“We come from a lot of violent events in different situations, the responsibility that one feels is to take care of one's own colleagues,” Congressman Kirchner said in a radio interview.

He also said that after the murder attempt on his mother, he was advised to wear a bulletproof vest, but he declined, saying that if it came down to that, then “it is not the country in which I want to live.”

“It seems that the furniture hired by Caputo is not made of good wood. It is worth asking what would happen if it were the other way around,” he also said about the payments made by the company of the Caputo brothers of Macrist allegiance to members of the Revolución Federal rebel group who staged protests against government officials.

Kirchner also praised Superminister Sergio Massa for the way he is handling the current crisis. “After December 9, 2015, Argentina entered a slide from which it never came out again,” and Massa is dealing with the consequences.

The Congressman also said he found it awkward that an incumbent president would have to face off rivals from his own political party during primary elections and insisted that “I believe that Cristina will not be a candidate.”

Meanwhile, Judge Julián Ercolini Monday CFK in the so-called “notebooks case” citing lack of conclusive evidence. An alleged bribing scheme substantiated on notes taken by then-driver Oscar Centeno could not be proven before the court due to irregularities in the entries, including some 1,600 alterations, including erasures, overwriting, and changes in the handwriting that indicate that several people made these notes, and not only Centeno himself, it was reported.

In these circumstances, Ercolini found that there were no elements to prove that said payments actually occurred. The alleged payments were supposedly made in 2008, 2010, and 2015, during Fernández's two presidential terms.