In a letter published on her website and social media, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has confirmed that she will not be running for president, or any other office. Kirchner accused the judiciary and the Supreme Court of imposing a “political ban” not only against her but the Peronist party as a whole.

“I’ve already said this on December 6, 2022. I am not going to be the mascota del poder (puppet for the powerful) for any candidacy,” she said. That day, she was handed a six-year prison sentence and a prospective lifetime ban from holding public office in the Vialidad case in which she was found guilty of fraudulently awarding public works contracts during her terms as president. She is still legally allowed to run for office until all instances of appeal have been exhausted.

“The conviction and ban, in this case, has only one political and electoral translation: a political ban.”

Kirchner contends in the letter that the Supreme Court is purposefully persecuting Peronism, dubbing it the “Judicial Party.” She drew parallels between her potential candidacy and the recent fallout over the Court suspending elections in San Juan and Tucumán.

“Just as three people [the justices of the Supreme Court] did it with the provinces of Tucumán and San Juan,” she said. “I have no doubt that they will do it against me in order to prevent Peronism from participating in the democratic process, or to weaken it, leading us to a dead end.”

Last week, the Supreme Court published preliminary rulings which declared the ineligibility of Tucumán and San Juan’s governors to run for reelection, suspending the provincial elections via precautionary measures in response to complaints filed by the opposition. 

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Kirchner also said in the letter that since 2016, the so-called “Judicial Party […] works as a task force for Juntos por el Cambio [the main opposition coalition].” She also accused the Clarín newspaper of being “the main source for spreading hatred towards me and my family,” of lamenting the failed assassination attempt against her, and of anticipating the Vialidad case ruling.

“We must be intelligent in order to get out of this labyrinth and break the trap into which they want to lead us: that we have a candidacy forbidden by the Judicial Party,” she wrote.

Kirchner also deemed it “essential” to draw up a “government program that will enamor Argentine men and women again and convince them that a better country is not only possible but also desirable. A government program that is necessary not only for Peronism but for the democratic system as a whole.”

She also spoke about the country’s economic turmoil –including the “bimonetary” nature of the economy, record-high inflation, and exchange runs against the peso-, and the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF.)

“This makes it impossible for any government to reasonably manage the natural distributive struggle for income and turns inflation into the most phenomenal instrument for the transfer of resources from society as a whole to the richest and most concentrated sectors of the economy,” she wrote.

“It is no coincidence that neither of the two Presidents who accepted the IMF program [referring to former President Mauricio Macri and incumbent Alberto Fernández] retains electoral aptitude,” she added, referring to her own political partner.

The current government and the IMF signed an Extended Fund Facility agreement in 2022 after renegotiating the US$44 billion debt former President Mauricio Macri acquired in 2018. The deal includes an economic program that Argentina must comply with in order to receive disbursements every three months, which are used to pay for the previous debt with the IMF.

Kirchner also said that “democracy lost in the economic arena, it degraded itself in social matters, and started to break down politically and institutionally.”

“An important part of the citizenship does not feel that democracy contains themselves or their aspirations,” she wrote.

— Reporting by Facu Iglesia and Valen Iricibar