The death of former President Néstor Kirchner will only make things more difficult for the newly widowed president. She has made serious mistakes on several fronts. Among them, using rough tactics, government officials have dismantled the INDEC (National Institute of Statistics and Censuses) of its technical personnel and replaced them with those loyal to the government.

As a result, that institution has lost all credibility. According to Argentina's government, inflation in 2009 was below 8 percent. However, according to independent economists and consumer groups inflation ranged between 15 and 18 percent during that same year.

This doesn't faze the president, who continues to insist that Argentina has a phenomenal economic growth rate. The astronomical rise in subsidies for poor families, however, belies her assertions. Complying with the country's usual paternalistic culture, Kirchner has taken that paternalism to extremes. The work ethic, an essential component of the social fabric necessary for development, is rapidly being eroded.

Kirchner has also developed a confrontational style of government. As with many authoritarian leader, she states that he who is not with her is against her and is to be treated accordingly. She has surrounded herself with a coterie of sycophants who seem to isolate her from reality. One of her ministers attends some meetings with a gun, which he ostentatiously places on top of a table before starting the discussion. She doesn't seem to realize that people are increasingly against her policies and condemn her imperious behavior.

While Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva incorporated 30 million poor into the middle class through his economic policies, more than 25 percent of Argentines live below the poverty line, a situation sharply criticized by Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, Buenos Aires' archbishop and the Catholic Church's highest authority in Argentina.

``We are noticing a situation of dramatic poverty and unemployment,'' said Bergoglio in 2009. ``More and more people are sleeping in the streets, and they have become disposable materials.'' Bergoglio's words followed a message by Pope Benedict XVI to the Argentine government demanding action to combat ``scandalous poverty.''

``There is no other country with such social regression, such social shame,'' said Bernardo Kosakoff, director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Argentina. I can easily believe this statement. As I write, I am seated at a popular restaurant in Buenos Aires. Through the window I see a very old woman bent under the weight of the largest plastic bag I have ever seen. It's filled with garbage, which she collects from garbage cans placed on the street.

This is happening at the same time that the Kirchners' personal fortune is increasing to outrageous levels. The Anti-Corruption Bureau is conducting an investigation into alleged malfeasance by the president, after a sworn statement by her and her late husband stated that their assets had grown 158 percent in a year.

While quite efficient in their own financial affairs, the president and her late husband failed to create the conditions for Argentina's future development.

With the death last week of the former president, whom many people believed was the real power behind the throne, the president has the opportunity to change policy and exert her own mark in Argentina's government.

The country desperately needs it.

César Chelala is a public health specialist and writer on human rights and foreign policy issues.