Margarita Stolbizer
Encyclopedia
Life and times
Margarita Stolbizer was born in the western Buenos AiresBuenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
suburb of Morón
Morón, Buenos Aires
Morón is a city in the Argentine province of Buenos Aires, capital of the Morón Partido, located in the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area, at...
, in 1955. She enrolled at the Universidad de Morón
Universidad de Morón
The Universidad de Morón is a private university located in Morón, Buenos Aires, Argentina, founded in 1960.Ten faculties offer courses on Agronomy and Agro-alimentary Sciences; Architecture, Design, Art and Urbanism; Law, Political and Social Sciences; Exact, Chemical, and Material Sciences;...
and graduated in 1978, after which she taught at her alma mater's law school for four years. An avid volleyball
Volleyball
Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules.The complete rules are extensive...
player, she created her city's first women's volleyball team. Stolbizer was named to the National Council of Lawyers' Associations and, following elections in 1983
Argentine general election, 1983
The Argentine general election of 1983 was held on 30 October and marked the return of Democracy after the 1976's dictatorship self-known as National Reorganization Process...
, she was appointed Social Policy Director for the city of Morón.
She had been affiliated with the centrist Radical Civic Union
Radical Civic Union
The Radical Civic Union is a political party in Argentina. The party's positions on issues range from liberal to social democratic. The UCR is a member of the Socialist International. Founded in 1891 by radical liberals, it is the oldest political party active in Argentina...
(UCR) - whose candidate, Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín was an Argentine lawyer, politician and statesman, who served as the President of Argentina from December 10, 1983, to July 8, 1989. Alfonsín was the first democratically-elected president of Argentina following the military government known as the National Reorganization...
had been elected President in 1983 - since her days at the university and in 1985, she was elected to the Morón City Council on the UCR ticket. As such she gained prominence for her role in the investigation and impeashment of opposition Justicialist Party
Justicialist Party
The Justicialist Party , or PJ, is a Peronist political party in Argentina, and the largest component of the Peronist movement.The party was led by Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, until his death on October 27, 2010. The current Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de...
Mayor Juan Carlos Rousselot, in 1989. She was later named staff counsel to the Infrastructure Contracts Investigations Committee of the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina's largest), and took part in ILO
Ilo
Ilo is a port city in southern Peru, with some 58,000 inhabitants. It is the largest city in the Moquegua Region and capital of the province of Ilo.-History:...
conferences on the subjects of labor rights and corruption, as well as the Human Rights Commission of the Latin American Parliament
Latin American Parliament
The Latin American Parliament , is a regional, permanent organization composed by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is a consultative assembly similar to the early European Parliament...
.
She supported Alfonsín's initiative to created an alliance with the center-left Frepaso and was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies
Argentine Chamber of Deputies
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house of the Argentine National Congress. This Chamber holds exclusive rights to create taxes, to draft troops, and to accuse the President, the ministers and the members of the Supreme Court before the Senate....
, in 1997
Argentine legislative election, 1997
Argentina held national parliamentary elections on 26 October 1997 and the results were as follows:-Background:President Carlos Menem, who successfully campaigned to have the Argentine Constitution amended in 1994 largely for the sake of being eligible for a second term in office, won the 1995...
. She was named to numerous committees dealing with legal and constitutional rights, and was eventually named President of the Penal Legislation Committee. Close to both Alfonsín and Congressman Federico Storani, her influence grew after Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa is an Argentine politician. He was president of the country from December 10, 1999 to December 21, 2001 for the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education ....
1999 election to the presidency and Storani's appointment as Interior Minister. She was strongly opposed, however, to the President's crisis decision to return Domingo Cavallo
Domingo Cavallo
Domingo Felipe "Mingo" Cavallo is an Argentine economist and politician. He has a long history of public service and is known for implementing the Convertibilidad plan, which fixed the dollar-peso exchange rate at 1:1 between 1991 and 2001, which brought the Argentine inflation rate down from over...
to the Economy Ministry, in March 2001. Cavallo had been first appointed to the post in 1991 by de la Rúa's predecessor and nemesis, Carlos Menem
Carlos Menem
Carlos Saúl Menem is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He is currently an Argentine National Senator for La Rioja Province.-Early life:...
, and was considered responsible by Stolbizer for the prevailing economic crisis
Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002)
The Argentine economic crisis was a financial situation, tied to poilitical unrest, that affected Argentina's economy during the late 1990s and early 2000s...
.
Stolbizer represented the Argentine Congress in the 2002 conference of Parliamentarians for Global Action
Parliamentarians for Global Action
Parliamentarians for Global Action is a non-profit and non-partisan international organization of more than 1,300 free elected legislators from 130 democratic countries . It was established circa 1978 as Parliamentarians for World Order engaged in a range of action-oriented initiatives that promote...
in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, and was named Vice President of their International Council. She was nominated by the UCR as a candidate for the office of Governor of Buenos Aires Province for the 2003 elections, though fallout from President de la Rúa's chaotic, December 2001 resignation helped relegate her to fourth place (garnering 9% of the vote).
She developed increasing differences with the UCR's leadership and in 2005, unsuccessfully challenged former President Alfonsín for the post of head of the Buenos Aires Province delegation to the UCR Central Committee. The party's weakness ahead of the 2007 presidential election
Argentine general election, 2007
Argentina held national presidential and legislative elections on October 28, 2007, and elections for provincial governors took place on staggered dates throughout the year. For the national elections, each of the 23 provinces and the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires are considered electoral districts...
prompted the UCR to endorse a stronger candidate akin to their views, which combine social democratic policies with a longtime anti-Peronism
Peronism
Peronism , or Justicialism , is an Argentine political movement based on the programmes associated with former President Juan Perón and his second wife, Eva Perón...
. Stolbizer, by then a leader in the UCR's congressional delegation, favored endorsing ARI
Support for an Egalitarian Republic
Civic Coalition ARI is a social liberal Argentine political party, founded in 2001 by Elisa Carrió. It is a member of the Civic Coalition with centrist and centre-left parties.- Creation and political representation :...
candidate Elisa Carrió
Elisa Carrió
Elisa María Avelina Carrió is an Argentine politician, founder of the party initially known as Alternative for a Republic of Equals , now Civic Coalition ARI ....
(whose 2001 defection from the UCR had distanced the former colleagues), though Alfonsín's preference for the center-left economist Roberto Lavagna
Roberto Lavagna
Roberto Lavagna is an Argentine economist and politician, and was the former Minister of Economy and Production of Argentina from April 27, 2002, to November 28, 2005.-Career:...
prevailed.
The dissension led to her break with the UCR, whereby she formed the Generation for a National Encounter (GEN), by which she ran again for Governor of Buenos Aires Province during the same 2007 elections. She fared better, with 17% of the vote, while still placing third (Lavagna, for his part, also garnered third place). Stolbizer continued her policy for fostering alliances with former rivals: in 2007, she led her GEN party into Carrió's Civic Coalition
Civic Coalition
The Civic Coalition is a political coalition in Argentina. It was founded by Elisa Carrió, as an association supported by the ARI party , as well as a number of other political groups and individual political leaders, notably Union for All of Patricia Bullrich and GEN - Generation for a National...
, which grew into the largest opposition to Néstor and Cristina Kirchner
Kirchnerism
Kirchnerism is a term used to refer to the political philosophy and supporters of Néstor Kirchner, president of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, and of his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President from 2007...
's ruling Front for Victory
Front for Victory
The Front for Victory is a Peronist political party and electoral alliance in Argentina, although it is formally a faction of the Justicialist Party. Both the former President Néstor Kirchner and the current President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner belong to this party, located on the left-wing...
; she also secured an alliance with Ricardo Alfonsín
Ricardo Alfonsín
Ricardo Alfonsín is an Argentine lawyer, academic and politician prominent in the Radical Civic Union. His father, Raúl Alfonsín, was the President of Argentina from 1983 to 1989.-Life and times:...
, a leading UCR figure and son of the late former President, ahead of the 2009 legislative elections
Argentine legislative election, 2009
Legislative elections were held in Argentina for half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the seats in the Senate on 28 June 2009, as well as for the legislature of the City of Buenos Aires and other municipalities.-Background:...
.