Justicialist Party
The
Justicialist Party (
Spanish:
Partido Justicialista,
PJ) is a
Peronist political party from
Argentina. It is the largest party, and is led by
Eduardo Camaño. The current president
Néstor Kirchner and former president
Carlos Menem are members.
In the
Argentine Chamber of Deputies it is the single largest party with 116 of 257 members, and has a majority of seats in the
Argentine Senate.
It was founded in 1945 by
Juan Domingo Perón. It is a laborer's party, theoretically of a centre-left tendency, based on the works of Juan Peron as a president. In the last decade and a half, however,
Carlos Menem applied right-wing policies changing the overall image of the party.
The Justicialist Party was effectively broken apart in the
2005 legislative elections by the presentation of two different Justicialist senator candidates for
Buenos Aires Province:
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (the President's wife) and
Hilda González de Duhalde (wife of former president
Eduardo Duhalde). The campaign was particularly vicious. Kirchner's side allied with other minor forces and presented itself as a heterodox, left-leaning
Frente para la Victoria (
Front for Victory), while Duhalde's side stuck to older Peronist tradition. González de Duhalde's defeat to her opponent marked, according to many political analysts, the end to Duhalde's dominance over the province. The Justicialist Party is currently (2006) in a flux, with former supporters of Duhalde's slowly defecting to the winner's side.
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Official website
