BUENOS AIRES, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is under house arrest, has asked the United Nations Human Rights Committee to review her corruption conviction and suspend the lifetime ban on holding public office that currently prevents her from running for election in 2027, her lawyer said on Tuesday.
Fernández was sentenced in 2025 to six years in prison and a permanent ban from public office following a fraud conviction, a ruling her defense team argues violated her fundamental rights during legal proceedings.
• Her lawyer, Rafael Valim, said the team is seeking a committee hearing in October, which could require Argentine courts to review the ruling before year’s end.
• A recent opinion poll by Zuban Cordoba showed Fernández with a 42% approval rating, surpassing President Javier Milei’s 36.1%.
• Fernández remains one of Argentina’s most divisive political figures but polls as high as Milei in voting-intention surveys, giving her potential prospects in Argentina’s October 2027 presidential election if the ban is lifted.
• She governed Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and served as vice president from 2019 to 2023.
• “We are working so the case is examined in October, at the committee’s next session,” Valim, a Brazilian lawyer who played a role in leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s defense, told Reuters.
• The move invites comparisons with Brazil’s Lula who challenged his corruption conviction before the UN Human Rights Committee and was later imprisoned and barred from the 2018 election. Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled his convictions in 2021, restoring his political rights and paving the way for his return to the presidency the following year.
• Should she be cleared to run, Fernández would still face political hurdles, analysts said, including securing support within Argentina’s broader leftist Peronist movement ahead of the presidential election next year.
(Reporting by Nicolas Misculin, writing by Natalia Siniawski. Editing by Lucinda Elliott)
