Recovering Argentinean president slowly begins reassuming control

With less than two weeks before important congressional elections will be held in Argentina, President Cristina Fernández Kirchner on Tuesday began meeting with her closest aides on Tuesday as she recovers from surgery to remove a blood clot from her brain.

The 60-year-old Fernández de Kirchner was released from a private hospital on Sunday, five days after undergoing the procedure that doctors said was caused by a head injury in August. Her physicians ordered “strict rest” for the president for the next 30 days.

Fernández de Kirchner’s health condition sidelined her in the middle of an intense campaign for the October 27 legislative elections.

According to the Buenos Aires daily La Nación, Fernández de Kirchner held her first meeting with her two closest advisors at the Los Olivos presidential residence where she is recovering: Carlos Zannini, the government legal and technical advisor and considered one of the most influential men in the country, and Óscar Parrilli, her Cabinet chief.

While administration officials have tried to keep details of her recovery under wraps, La Nación — quoting government sources — said that the president has begun asking about certain issues and imparting instructions.

The campaign has also been overshadowed by a video that emerged over the weekend, which shows a heated dispute between one of Fernández de Kirchner’s Victory Front (FPV) bloc candidates and a Buenos Aires police officer, who was later fired. The incident — which took place five months ago — involved Buenos Aires city legislator Juan Cabandié, who will be competing for a seat in Congress. He is shown in the video at a routine traffic checkpoint arguing with a female police officer who threatened to confiscate his vehicle because he had no car insurance papers. An angry Cabandié accuses the cop, Belén Mosquera, of insulting him.

“In no way did I throw out at you that I am a deputy,” he tells her. “I can be tougher than you because I had to put up with the dictatorship. I am also a child of missing persons.”

“I was not disrespectful; you are the one being disrespectful because you are treating us all like jerks,” she said.

Cabandié is then seen calling a person name “Martín” to ask that the officer be “punished.” Mosquera was sacked in August when municipal authorities decided not to renew her six-month contract.

On Tuesday, Cabandié apologized for his behavior, but insisted he had nothing to do with the woman being fired. He called the video “a political operation” because it was released on the eve of the elections.

But the opposition has called on Cabandié to abandon the race.

The top national candidate on the ruling FPV bloc slate, Martín Insaurralde, played down the incident and said that he didn’t believe Fernández de Kirchner knows about the video because she is currently “under strict orders to rest.”