Aregentine President Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner on Saturday used the first news conference by an Argentine president in five years to defend her government after facing the biggest political crisis of her eight-month-old presidency.
Fernandez was dealt a major blow last month when she was forced to drop a plan to raise taxes on the country’s vital grain exports after the Senate rejected it following four months of protests by farmers.
Despite the turmoil the proposal created, she expressed no regrets.
“I would do it again,” she told more than 200 reporters who gathered for the rare news conference.
“For the first time since returning to democracy [in 1983], the institutions were able to seriously discuss ... a law that for the first time relates to the redistribution of income,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez took office in December after a long Senate career, succeeding her husband Nestor Kirchner, who never held a news conference in his four years in power.
Analysts called it part of her strategy to regain political footing after her sharp fall in popularity and key political defeat in the four-month farming crisis.
Some polls put her approval ratings at 20 percent.
Fernandez denied opposition claims that her husband runs her presidency.
“Comments of that nature come from a biased reading of reality,” she said of claims that Kirchner is still running the government. “We’re simply a political team that has worked for a long time with the same vision and common ideas about the society we want.”
She imposed the grain-import taxes in March to encourage farmers to sell grains locally rather than at soaring export prices.
The taxes sparked protests, road blockades and sporadic food shortages.
They were defeated in a surprise Senate vote last month, with Fernandez’s own vice president casting the deciding vote.
Fernandez said high agricultural profits in the face of soaring world food prices still “should be taken up as an instrument of economic policy.”
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