Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner narrowly survived an assassination attempt outside her home in Buenos Aires on Thursday (September 1) after the gunman’s weapon did not go off, leaving her unharmed. Footage showed the Vice President leaving her car surrounded by supporters when a man emerging from the crowd aimed a gun at her head from point-blank range that failed to fire. The assailant, identified as a 35-year-old Brazilian man, was quickly taken into custody by the police. Authorities are yet to establish the motive for the attack on Fernández, a two-time former President (2007 to 2015) who is in the midst of a corruption trial. "This is the most serious event we have gone through since Argentina returned to democracy," said President Alberto Fernández in a national broadcaster. He called for a holiday on Friday to give citizens time to "express themselves in defence of life, democracy and in solidarity with our vice president". Who is Argentina Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner? The country’s first elected female president who served two four-year terms, between 2007 and 2015, Fernández de Kirchner is an Argentinian lawyer and politician. Prior to that, she was Argentina’s First Lady from 2003 to 2007 after her husband Néstor Kirchner came to office. Currently holding the post of Vice President, she has faced numerous corruption charges and is a divisive, yet deeply popular figure in Argentinian politics. A political veteran, Fernández de Kirchner has been active in electoral politics since the 1980s, and is one of the left-of-centre leaders who were all heading countries in South America around the same period in the 2000s. This shift of voters toward leftist leaders was often called the "pink tide". She began her political career while studying at the National University of La Plata where she joined the Justicialist Movement. She served as the provincial delegate to the Justicialist (Peronist) Party convention in 1985 and was elected deputy for the provincial legislature of Santa Cruz in 1989. She represented Santa Cruz in the Senate for two terms, 1995 to 1997 and 2001 to 2005, and also served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1997 to 2001. Fernández de Kirchner won a landslide victory in the 2007 general election, capturing 45% of the final presidential vote tally, before winning again in 2011. Corruption charges and later career Since leaving the office of President in 2015, Fernández de Kirchner has been associated with a series of scandals and investigated for various crimes like bribery, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and speculative damage to the state, as reported by ABC News. She is currently on trial for a corruption case, where she is accused of fraudulently awarding state funds for public roadwork projects to a company owned by a family friend during her presidency, as reported by The New York Times. Fernández de Kirchner has denied the charges and claimed that the case was politically motivated. Last month, the lead prosecutor in the case asked the Buenos Aires court to sentence her to 12 years in prison, along with a lifetime ban from holding public office. Fernández de Kirchner’s supporters continued to back her, holding rallies outside her home for nearly two weeks. On August 27, thousands of protestors took to the streets of Buenos Aires, clashing with the police and pulling down barricades around her house. However, the case has raised concerns about rising political tensions in the country, as her right-wing critics continue to call for her arrest, with some oppositon politicians calling for the death penalty to be reintroduced for the Vice President, as reported by The Guardian.
