First Lady became President

On October 28th Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of Argentina’s president Nestor Kirchner, became the first woman to be democratically elected in the country’s history.

Mrs. Kirchner, representing the ruling Front for Victory party, won with 45% of the vote and a 22% lead over her nearest rival, Elisa Carrió, a center-left former deputy. In March Mrs. Carrió, who also ran for the presidency in 2003 obtaining a fifth place, resigned her seat in Congress to lead the campaign representing Civic Coalition. Roberto Lavagna, the former Ministry of Economy, trailed 17% of the ballots.

In her first appearance after winning the election, she called on all Argentines to begin a period “without hatred or bitterness” in order to “rebuild the social and institutional fabric”. A country, she said, could not be built by a government alone.

Felipe Noguera, a well-known political analyst and consultant, is convinced that the concern about a past crisis ensured success of the first lady. Argentines want to keep the economic recovery and none of the candidates was able to propose a better alternative than the Kirchners. Some consider this as the beginning of dynasty, since the Kirchners will rotate the presidency, thereby avoiding the constitutional ban on holding more than two consecutive terms.

The challenges Mrs. Kirchner will have to face are all tied to the economy. The big issues are expected to be employment, the consolidation of growth and its fair distribution, a rising inflation and declining health and education systems. Most analysts do not expect great changes in domestic policies, however Mrs. Kirchner seems to be more interested in global affairs than her husband. During the campaign, she travelled widely to Spain, Mexico, Germany and most remarkably to the United States, with which Néstor Kirchner has rather cold relations.

 Argentines are always difficult to keep interested when there’s a foregone result, even though voting was mandatory for 27 million people. Electoral Commission could not find enough volunteers to work in the polling stations and many opened late. According to Felipe Noguera, “the vote has been one of the most chaotic in Argentina’s recent history”. There were large queues of voters and the stations were opened for an extra hour to allow everyone to cast their ballots.

 Cristina Fernández has been often compared with Eva Peron and Hillary Clinton. She does share some of Eva Peron’s tenacity and passion, but she more resembles more Hillary Clinton. Both married their law-school boyfriends, helped them become Governors and run for presidency, to finally become first ladies. Mrs. Clinton, like her Argentinean counterpart, is a senator running for the top job in the US. Mrs. Fernández certainly hopes Hillary Clinton will join the growing number of women in top jobs in America, following not only her example but also Michelle Bachelet’s and several women in senior government posts in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

 The new president will be sworn in on December 10th. Mrs. Kirchner will easily find her way to the Casa Rosada or Pink House, which has been her husband’s workplace since he took up Argentina’s presidency in 2003. But what she has planned for the future of Argentina remains unclear.

Is the iPhone the Apple of our eye?

There are plenty of things you can do with 400 euros: celebrate New Year’s Eve in Barcelona, spend a week in Turkey or buy a spanking new pair of Manolo Blahnik’s. But if you are a gadget lover you’ll save every last penny to get yourself an iPhone.

Unless you’ve been hidden away in a cave for the last year, you already know what an iPhone is. A multimedia, internet-enabled and touch screen mobile phone designed by Apple.

Following the trail of success of iPod, Apple announced its iPhone last January at the Macworld 2007, a biannual Macintosh conference. The iPhone was released, first in the United States on June 29th, with much media frenzy and then in the UK, France and Germany in November 2007 with more skepticism.

In the last 6 months, the iPhone has been the subject of 40,000 reviews, and it turns up about 18 million times on Google, becoming one of the most talked-about electronics products ever. In the United States, people call it the “Jesus phone” and zealots are waiting outside in front of Apple stores to get hold of one. All of this before most of consumers has even touched the gadget. So what’s so special about iPhone?

It turns out that all the hype and critics are indeed well-grounded. It does things no phone has ever done before; but it lacks some basic features found in many phones, including stereo Bluetooth, 3G compatibility or an unexpandable 8GB flash memory.

The bigger achievement is the software, based in Mac OS X. It’s beautiful, fast, robust and really simple to use. There is a single button at the bottom, which always takes you back to the homepage. Otherwise it’s all a combination of gently touching in the screen that makes the phone come alive.

The multimedia performs well. The iPhone is also an iPod. It offers an easy-to-use applications for music, photos and videos. The camera is only 2 megapixels, fewer that the best camera-focused mobiles, but the image is clear as long as shot direct light.

The iPhone is able to access the web when connected to a WIFI or a network. It’s a child’s game to send an email. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with images. You can even open PDF, Word and Excel documents. The Web browser is also fantastic. The iPhone lets the user zoom into sections of a page with a double tap, overcoming the limitations of screen size. Making a call, though, takes as many as six steps and the call quality is variable.

For a phone which boasts of being an internet communicator it lacks features such as instant messaging and voice over IP. There’s also no GPS integrated.

The phone runs on what is known as the Edge network, which is significantly slower than 3G - the fastest mobile network, already a standard in European telecommunication. It makes less appealing the idea of a quick trip to France to buy an unlocked iPhone. However Apple confirmed last week that iPhone second generation will incorporate 3G technology. It’s definitely worth to wait if you don’t want to spend 50 seconds waiting Wave Magazine’s home page to appear.

Far from being perfect, the iPhone meets the expectations we have for mobile devices. It provokes a reaction among gadget geeks and general public that no other phone can match.