is purely coincidental.Néstor Carlos Kirchner (25 February 1950 – 27 October 2010) was an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007. A member of the Justicialist Party, he previously served as Governor of Santa Cruz Province from 1991 to 2003, and mayor of Río Gallegos from 1987 to 1991. He was succeeded as president by his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, resulting in him becoming the first ever (and still only) First Gentleman of Argentina. Ideologically, he identified himself as a Peronist and a progressive, with his political approach called Kirchnerism.
Born in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Kirchner studied law in La Plata, where he met and married Cristina Fernández, returned with her to Río Gallegos at graduation, and opened a law firm. He ran for mayor of Río Gallegos in 1987 and for governor of Santa Cruz in 1991, being reelected in 1995 and 1999 due to an amendment of the provincial constitution.
Kirchner sided with Buenos Aires Province governor Eduardo Duhalde in his dispute against President Carlos Menem. Although Duhalde lost the 1999 presidential election, he would be appointed president by Congress after previous presidents Fernando de la Rúa and Adolfo Rodríguez Saá resigned during the December 2001 riots. Duhalde suggested Kirchner to run for president in 2003 after Menem announced his candidacy to the presidency for a third time, in an attempt to stop him. Menem won a plurality of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, but, fearing that he would lose in the runoff, he resigned, and Kirchner became president as a result.
After taking office on 25 May 2003, Roberto Lavagna, credited with the economic recovery during Duhalde's presidency, was retained as minister of economy and continued his economic policies. Argentina negotiated a swap of defaulted debt and repaid the International Monetary Fund. The amnesty for crimes committed during the Dirty War via the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws and the presidential pardons granted to junta members by Menem were repealed and declared unconstitutional, leading to new trials for the military who served during the 1970s. Argentina increased its integration with other Latin American countries, discontinuing its automatic alignment with the United States dating to the start of Menem's presidency. The 2005 midterm elections were a victory for Kirchner, and signaled the end of Duhalde's supremacy in Buenos Aires Province.
Instead of seeking reelection, Kirchner stepped aside in 2007 in support of his wife, who was elected president. After leaving office, he participated in Operation Emmanuel to release FARC hostages, was appointed Secretary General of UNASUR, and ran in the 2009 midterm election for deputy of Buenos Aires Province, though he was narrowly defeated.
Kirchner was not exempt from controversy, though. Commentators have criticized him for a lack of legal activism during the Dirty War despite his law career coinciding with it and being an issue he would involve himself in as president. He and his wife were accused of being involved (either directly or through their close aides) in the 2013 political scandal known as the Trail of the K-Money, although no judicial investigation ever found any proof of wrongdoing by either of them.
Kirchner died of cardiac arrest on 27 October 2010, news that came as shocking to the Argentine population as his cardiac problems were reported in public as not being very serious.
Works featuring Néstor Kirchner:
Live-Action TV- He was one of many Argentine politicians parodied in Argentine variety show VideoMatch (and its successor ShowMatch)
