BUENOS AIRES — When I asked Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri last week whether it would help him politically in the 2019 elections if former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner goes to jail soon on corruption charges, his responded: “They tell me that it wouldn’t help me.”
He said that many people tell him that, “It would be best if she ran for office” next year, because putting her in jail now would let her play the victim, claiming political persecution. This would only galvanize her supporters.
Macri immediately distanced himself from that theory. He told me that the fate of the former president should be decided by the justice system, without any interference from his government.
