• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 10 / 27 / 2010

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Néstor Kirchner, Argentina’s president from 2003 to 2007, the husband of the incumbent, Cristina Fernández and the man widely considered the country’s most powerful politician, died suddenly on Wednesday after a heart attack. He was 60.

Mr Kirchner was rushed to hospital in their home in Calafate, in the south of Argentina early on Wednesday, accompanied by Ms Fernández, after being taken ill overnight. Doctors were unable to revive him, according to local television.

The former president, who was fond of saying he took power in Argentina when it was still in “hell” after its default on nearly $100bn in 2001, returned the country to high growth before handing power to his wife in 2007. But the sustainability of the policies which she pursued – under his direction from behind the scenes - has come under increasing question amid soaring inflation.

He had been considering a formal political comeback in presidential elections due in October 2011, though his deteriorating health – he had twice been hospitalised this year for cardiovascular surgery – had raised questions about which half of the Kirchner couple would finally be the government candidate.

Mr Kirchner went from being a political outsider from the windswept Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, where he was governor, to Argentina’s most powerful politican since Juan Domingo Perón, who was president in the 1940s and 1950s and returned to power briefly in the 1970s. Mr Kirchner was a member of the Peronist party, though his brand of politics increasingly became associated with a power-centric, investor-unfriendly administration.

Mr Kirchner was also president of Unasur, a grouping of regional Latin American countries.

Source: FT.Com