AFP :
Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Kirchner directly challenged her boss, President Alberto Fernandez on Thursday, demanding a cabinet reshuffle and blaming the ruling coalition’s recent electoral defeat on his economic policies.
In a deepening political crisis, Kirchner wrote an open letter to Fernandez one day after five cabinet ministers and other senior officials offered to step down after a poor showing for the ruling coalition in weekend primary elections. Fernandez has rejected the resignations.
“Do you seriously believe that it is not necessary, after such a defeat, to publicly present the resignations and that those in charge facilitate the president to reorganize his government?” Kirchner wrote in the letter in which she criticized those who “cling to their chairs.”
She also said she had warned that the government’s economic policies would “have electoral consequences.” The ruling Frente de Todos center-left coalition garnered less than 31
percent of the vote ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 14 to renew half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of those in the Senate.
The alliance has a majority in the Senate and had been hoping to achieve the same in the lower house.
Sunday’s vote was to pick candidates for the November elections, but it is also considered a barometer of people’s voting intentions.