#MsLMstatus: Argentine President, Cristina Fernandez Wins Re-Election (October 23rd-29th)

 

Fernandez had 53 percent of the vote after 43 percent of the polling stations reported nationwide. Her nearest challenger got just 17 percent. Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo predicted the president’s share would rise as polls reported from her party’s stronghold of densely populated Buenos Aires province. “Count on me to continue pursuing the project,”Fernandez vowed in her victory speech. “All I want is to keep collaborating … to keep Argentina growing. I want to keep changing history.”
Fernandez is Latin America’s first woman to be re-elected as president, but the victory was personally bittersweet – the first without her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, who died of a heart attack last Oct. 27. “This is a strange night for me,” she said, describing her mix of emotions. “This man who transformed Argentina led us all and gave everything he had and more … Without him, without his valor and courage, it would have been impossible to get to this point.” Thousands of jubilant, flag-waving people crowded into the capital’s historic Plaza de Mayo to watch on a huge TV screen as she spoke from a downtown hotel, where her supporters interrupted so frequently with their chants that she lectured them as a mother would her children: “The worst that people can be is small. In history, you always must be bigger still – more generous, more thoughtful, more thankful.”

-Huffington Post