The close ties between Kirchner and Chávez were the subject of very frank remarks by the US State Department's under secretary for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, during an address to the Washington-based Council of the Americas on 22 March. Staring into the eyes of the Argentine ambassador to the US, José Octavio Bordón, Burns said, "I'm sorry that that rally was held there on the same day that our president was in Montevideo. I didn't think that was the right thing to do. And I'm sorry to say that, Mr. Ambassador, but that's the feeling that everyone in our government has about that." Burns, who visited Buenos Aires last month, called for "a more consistently friendly relationship with Argentina". Bordón said simply that Chávez "exercised the freedom that we live in Argentina". 

Senior cabinet ministers in Argentina, however, took umbrage. Jorge Taiana, the foreign minister, said Burns's comments were "surprising and unacceptable", while the prime minister, Alberto Fernández, said that Argentina was a sovereign country and reminded Burns that Chávez staged a political rally in Harlem during a visit to New York in September 2006. Chávez also chimed in, saying, "I regret that Bush's visit took place the same day we were in Buenos Aires". At the same time, the orientation of Kirchner's foreign policy was underlined by Cristina Fernández's visit to Ecuador and Venezuela. Both Chávez and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa hailed her as "possibly the next president of Argentina", fulfilling Kirchner's aim of keeping the opposition guessing.

Lavagna is seeking to capitalise on unease at Argentina's increasingly close relations with Chávez and the government's less and less guarded criticism of the US. The concern for Kirchner is that Lavagna is now a competitive option. At first glance, the UCR national convention on 24 March, will not have given Kirchner any sleepless nights. The faction of the party led by the secretary general, Margarita Stolbizer, which wants a UCR candidate for the presidency, expressed vocal opposition to Lavagna, although the convention eventually backed the alliance, favoured by UCR president Gerardo Morales. Delegates will select a candidate to be Lavagna's running mate by June. 

Lavagna will now set about building a Peronist structure on the UCR base. Dissident Peronists are already rallying around him. Partido Justicialista (PJ) senator, Hilda Duhalde, threw her weight behind Lavagna this week. Her husband, former president Eduardo Duhalde, still has political clout in the Peronist movement. Lavagna will also court the leader of Peronismo de Pie, Ramón Puerta, and possibly the governor of Neuquén, Jorge Sobisch, although Sobisch repeated his determination to run for president this week. He will not receive support from the leader of Recrear, Ricardo López Murphy, who emphatically ruled out an alliance with Peronism.

All this is not to say Kirchner has been sitting around idly. Having won over five of the six UCR governors, the so-called K Radicals, he has begun wooing the one stand-out governor, Roy Nikisch, of Chaco province, who he has met twice in the last two weeks in the Casa Rosada, in a deliberate effort to ensure that Lavagna is deprived of the support of any of the UCR governors. Nikisch even attended the launch of a housing plan alongside Kirchner on 20 March.

Executive versus judiciary 
In another move that smacks of electioneering, Kirchner chose the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the military coup on 24 March to rail against the judiciary during a rally in the central province of Córdoba. "I want to say to Argentina's judicial system: Enough, please, enough! Trial and punishment. We need the judges to get a move on," Kirchner said. He singled out Argentina's highest criminal court, Cámara de Casación Penal, for special criticism saying that it was delaying the course of justice in cases involving human rights abuses committed under the military regime. The interior minister, Aníbal Fernández, later defended Kirchner and called on the president of the court, Alfredo Bisordi, to "do the country a favour and resign" in order to avoid impeachment proceedings.

Bisordi did not take the criticism lying down. He accused Kirchner of riding roughshod over the separation of powers. "In 40 years I have never seen such explicit interference by the executive branch in the judicial branch," he said. His hyperbolic remarks were not reiterated by the supreme court which called for "a more measured and balanced respect for judicial independence". Not all judges condemned the substance of Kirchner's attack either but many criticised him for not going straight to the judicial council, Consejo de la Magistratura, which handles the appointment and removal of judges.

Kirchner has successfully challenged impunity in Argentina which has contributed to his popularity but the choice of forum for his diatribe against the judiciary looks misjudged. It sounded like populist campaign rhetoric and it feeds into the growing suspicion that Kirchner is a bit too willing to interfere in nominally independent institutions: the recent replacement of the official responsible for the consumer price index at the national statistics agency, Indec, with a political appointment raised concerns that he was manipulating inflation figures [WR-07-06]. Also, while his invective played well to the crowd, many who want more action from the judiciary fear it will now close ranks. 

On 27 March Kirchner, always well informed on what the press has to say and just as frequently scathing of it, launched into the national daily La Nación, for accusing him of jeopardising the balance of power. He said he would have been "a coward" if he had kept his mouth shut. He added that he had fought to regain the independence of the judiciary and would not jeopardise that. With this in mind, it is worth noting his sweeping reform of the judicial council in January 2006, which gave the executive a greater say in the running of the judiciary (see sidebar). The council will rule on whether to dismiss any judges in the Casación.

Judicial council
"I know the judicial council is going to take action," President Néstor Kirchner said at the Córdoba rally in reference to the judges in the Cámara de Casación he believes to be sitting on human rights cases. Kirchner has asked the council to investigate four judges from Casación, including its head, Alfredo Bisordi. Congress approved a bill in January 2006, promoted by Kirchner's wife Senator Cristina Fernández, to downsize the judicial council from 20 to 13, including senators, deputies, judges, lawyers, an academic and a representative of the executive.