beyondbrics

If, as Hugo Chávez has maintained, the rash of cancers affecting leftist Latin American leaders is all a CIA plot, it has failed in the case of Cristina Fernández of Argentina.

In the space of a fortnight, doctors had diagnosed her with thyroid cancer during a routine medical exam and whipped out the offending thyroid gland. But then it turned out at the weekend that the populist president, who won a second term in October propelled by her free-spending government ways, never had cancer after all.

The presidential palace even went so far as to publish her medical test results to prove that what had been detected was “consistent with papillary carcinoma” and to seek to lay to rest any whiff of malpractice.

With such “false positives” occurring only in two people in every hundred, though, the news left many scratching their heads and some dared even to think the unthinkable: was there some kind of manipulation going on?

It’s a tempting thought (though one for which there is not a shred of evidence beyond Argentines’ penchant for conspiracy theories). Argentina is kicking off the new year with a raft of utilities and transport hikes that could dent the presidential popularity. A triumph over adversity, however, could repeat the outpouring of sympathy she experienced when her husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner, died suddenly in October 2010.

Hermés Binner, who came a distant runner-up to Fernández in the October elections and is a doctor by training, said it was vital to clear up in peoples’ minds that this was an error since it “generates a framework of suspicion”.

Fernández could now return to work earlier than January 24, when her medical leave was due to end, but there have been no official announcements. Her surgeon was due to visit her at the presidential residence on Monday. But with cancer ruled out and her post-op recovery going well, she was reportedly back in touch with her ministers and with her hand on the tiller once again.

Clarín, the top-selling paper with which the government is embroiled in a fierce war (fuelled by the paper’s criticism of the diagnosis), summed up the situation with irony here, in which it said:

Perhaps the best sign that the president’s is recovering swiftly is that yesterday, like every Sunday morning, she read the papers and got angry.

A concluding swipe in the same article – in which it claimed that the president who is known to care about her looks, was thinking about plastic surgery to conceal the scar – will have done nothing to improve her mood.

But as one blog put it succinctly: if there’s no cancer, the truce is over.

Related news:
Fernández cleared of cancer scare, FT
Argentina’s new year tariff hikes, beyondbrics
Argentina’s president diagnosed with cancer, FT