ARGENTINA: A year after President Kirchner took over his crisis-ridden country Seamus Mirodan reports from Buenos Aires on how he has been doing
At first glance, the once little known Nestor Kirchner, former governor of Patagonian, appears to have enjoyed a good deal of success as President of Argentina. He has earned sky-high approval ratings and been dubbed Hurricane K for his strong man tactics in government.
However, a spree of violent crimes in Buenos Aires and Argentina's worst energy crisis for a decade, have prompted large-scale public demonstrations and speculation that there may be trouble ahead.
This time last year Mr Kirchner left the glacial, oil-rich valleys of Santa Cruz province in the south and brought a cold wind of change with him to Buenos Aires. During his first two weeks in office the new president purged the leaders of an extremely corrupt police force, overhauled the military high command and ousted officials with links to the 1976-83 military dictatorship.
Since then Mr Kirchner has waged what he calls "a war on impunity". He scrapped legislation granting an amnesty to members of the US-backed junta which murdered 30,000 Argentine civilians during a bloody crackdown on left-wing radicals. In a later symbolic gesture, he turned the regime's most notorious torture centre into a museum dedicated to the memory of those killed. According to Ms Mora y Araujo, a spokeswoman for the opinion polling company IPSOS, this forthright stance has earned him national approval ratings which have never slipped below 70 per cent, making him "the most popular president in Argentine history".
Renewed confidence has brought with it an economic turnaround for Argentina which had, in December 2001, suffered the worst economic crisis in history. Last year, the economy grew by 12 per cent and ordinary people have begun to cast aside their apathy, once again daring to hope for a brighter future.
Nevertheless, Mr Kirchner's human rights campaign has not been as wholeheartedly embraced as he might have hoped. The citizens of Buenos Aires are more concerned with the surge in ransom kidnappings, street hold-ups and robberies that has blighted the country since the economic collapse.
Crime dominates today's political agenda and the government is seen as having been slow to react. Outraged by the brutal murder of 23-year-old engineering student Axel Blumberg at the hands of his kidnappers last month, around 150,000 demonstrators marched with his father, lit thousands of white candles outside Congress and demanded tougher penalties for offenders. Caught on the political hop, Mr Kirchner's government was forced to cobble together a hasty national security plan which has received mixed reactions.
As the bereaved father Mr Juan Carlos Blumberg explained to The Irish Times: "We feel that this government focuses too much on the past. What we want is the right for our children to live today."
However, guaranteeing this basic right is no easy task in Buenos Aires Province where the police force are renowned for corruption and, in the words of the province's Attorney General, Mr Eduardo de la Cruz: "There are people permanently entrenched in branches of the government who serve criminal interests."
Mr Blumberg is convinced that "the police and politicians were involved" in his son's murder.
"The physical authors have been caught, but those intellectually responsible, the brains of the operation, still roam free," he said.
Over the last two months Argentina has also entered its worst energy crisis in a decade, which is threatening to derail the economic recovery. Once again the government seemed unprepared and hastily issued a plan of action detailing the creation of a state-owned energy company. The role of such a company in an industry which was privatised during the 1990s is proving difficult for analysts to fathom.
Mr Kirchner has also failed to come to an agreement with Argentina's creditors who are still owed around $180 billion.