By Bryan Weiner
Christmas and the New Year are important holidays in Latin American countries. Latin American leaders, as with many other leaders on Twitter, put out an obligatory posting or tweet wishing the citizens of their countries a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This year, however, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s social media accounts have been completely silent all through the holiday season. She has not made a tweet since December 13th and the only post on Facebook that she has made was to firmly declare that she has no intention of running again for president.
This new period of silence comes on the heels of six and a half weeks of mandatory bed rest after a recent surgery that she had on a hematoma that she had on her brain after a fall that she took. While she continued her social media presence between November 18th, when she was released from bed rest, and December 21st, it was subdued and very much to the point. The normally exuberant and outspoken “mother of Argentina” seems to have been silenced.
This has left many Argentinian’s quite concerned. One man commented on her Facebook post, “When are you going to show yourself on national television again. Not to give figures but to clarify to the more than forty million Argentinians everything that is happening to you (which is serious).” While the reports have said that she is in good health, there is definite concern amongst her citizens and followers on social media.
Kirchner is spending the holidays in the south of Argentina at her family’s homes in El Calafate and Rio Gallegos. She has taken a full 15 days of rest again, which was very controversial due to the fact that she never responded to a heat wave, an energy crisis and electricity and water cuts in Buenos Aires. While she has been criticized for this by La Nación, a paper that is often very critical of her presidency, it is something that is very much out-of-character for her. She has always had something to say and has never had any previous gaps in her social media presence, even during the holiday season last year.
Is Kirchner’s presidency winding down? Are there serious health concerns that have resurfaced now more than a month after the completion of her surgery? Kirchner is a person who is very outspoken about her role as a politician, but very quiet about anything to do with her personal life. It was reported that not only was she very quiet on social media, but she kept very much to herself in her family home over the holidays. This may just be a very private leader stepping briefly out of the spotlight, or it could be, as many of Kirchner’s followers have mentioned, a sign of her exhaustion.
Kirchner will be back in the office again tomorrow, Monday, January 6th, and will presumably be back on social media. It will be interesting to see whether she comes back to her earlier social media presence or whether Argentina will have a new, quieter Kirchner for the remainder of her term.
