Gender equality & the G-20bis

This year's official photo from the G-20 summit, held this past weekend in Toronto, Canada, looks pretty much like last year's from London, England: there's German Chancellor Angela Merkel in orange, Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in white, and standing 2 rows behind her, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, till tomorrow the President of the Philippines. Et alia. Another G-20 country now also has a woman leader, but Julia Gillard, Prime Minister only since Friday, sent Australia's Treasurer, Wayne Swan (top middle).

Newest woman head of government

About 3 hours ago Julia Gillard was sworn in as Prime Minister of Australia, the 1st woman to hold that position. "Gillard was greeted with a kiss by her partner Tim Mathieson as she entered the room for the swearing-in." She took the oath from the country's 1st woman Governor-General, Quentin Bryce.
Gillard (left) had been Deputy Prime Minister since 2007 (prior IntLawGrrls post). On September 29, 1961, she was born into a working-class family in Wales. The family immigrated when she was 4. Gillard earned her law degree from the University of Melbourne, and practiced law before becoming Chief of Staff to the opposition leader in Parliament in 1995. Three years later, she herself was elected, and has served in Parliament ever since. (credit for photo by Rebecca Hallas)
Gillard's selection Wednesday as the new Prime Minister brought tears to the eyes of her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, who lost a struggle to retain leadership of the Labor Party to which both belong. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that "Mr Rudd had decided to fight to the death after refusing to step aside last night for Ms Gillard."
A partial list of women heads of government or state to which Gillard now belongs:

Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, Doris Leuthard of Switzerland, Pratibha Patil of India, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and Kyrgyzstan's interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva.

Can you name others?

The Madres move on

Hebe de Bonafini, President of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, shown at left with her traditional white kerchief, can be seen more often today with a construction helmet. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo are best known for their demonstrations, begun 30 years ago, calling for justice for those who lost their children during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Today, there are only about 20 of the original Madres left, aged between 76 and 94 and, as the group has evolved, so too have its activities. The weekly Thursday demonstrations have been supplemented by the founding of a people’s university, a newspaper, radio, and their own publishing house. And now, the Madres are in the construction business: with support from President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they have begun a vast programming to urbanize about 10 of Buenos Aires’ slums. One of the largest slums, Ciudad Oculta (hidden city) will gain 900 residences. The “White Elephant,” a structure built in 1950 to become Argentina’s most modern hospital and abandoned 50 years ago will rehabilitated to house apartments, schools, daycare centers, a hospital, a library and a recreation center. Bonafini sees these “public works” as a continuation of the struggle for which so many people died:

The Madres’ job is no longer to resist. Our children died for an ideal, we continue their battle against social injustice.

According to Bonafini’s right-hand man, Sergio Schoklender, most slum residents have never worked and 80% claim to live off garbage. By training and employing them to do the urbanization work themselves,

the Madres’ are implementing a global approach to social reality that will enable [them] to eliminate all at once delinquency, drugs and prostitution.

It will, in any case, be a start, and one that hasn’t gone unnoticed by President Fernández de Kirchner, who has asked that the project be extended to other provinces.

Transnational criminal law: No le gusta a la nueva Presidente

Just days after succeeding her husband as President of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (right) complained in a televised speech last week:

There is some garbage in international politics that holds back development and seriousness in international relationships.

The cause for her concern? The arrest and filing of federal criminal charges against a U.S. citizen, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson of Miami, Florida, and 4 noncitizens, all alleged to have been smuggling into Argentina $800,000 in cash, found stuffed in a suitcase on Antonini's arrival in August at the Buenos Aires airport.

U.S. prosecutors say that the 5 were acting on behalf of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and so they've charged them with "conspiring to act as agents of the Venezuelan government within the United States, without having notified the attorney general" of the United States.

The purported destination for the cash? The campaign coffers of then-presidential candidate Fernández, who played the gender card in crying foul:

'This president may be a woman, but she’s not going to allow herself to be pressured,' Mrs. Kirchner said in a televised speech. She said she would 'continue affirming our friendship with all Latin American countries and also with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.'

Well and good, but scarcely an answer to the law of the case. President Fernández seems unaware of various principles by which a state may exercise extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction -- principles that the United States, in particular, has employed quite expansively, to combat a host of transnational offenses, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, terrorism, and public corruption. In this case that exercise surely would seem justified with regard to the U.S. citizen, and likely as to the others, given that a part of the conduct at issue is alleged to have taken place inside the United States. The case thus would seem noncontroversial as a matter of law.

Politics, of course, is a whole 'nother thing.

(Incidentally, Fernández is not the only public figure less than perfectly schooled in this law. For a very different example of the problem, see our colleague Roger Alford's transnational criminal law critique of the steroids-in-baseball report here.)

2 countries headed for women leaders

"May the best (wo)man win," proclaimed a Buenos Aires Herald headline as voters went to the polls yesterday to choose a new President. The top 2 candidates were women, and 1, it appears, has won. Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (left) has claimed victory in Argentina over her closest rival, former legislator Elisa Carrió, who conceded the election. "Cristina, 54, as she is widely referred to ... won the support of many Argentines despite offering few original proposals," the Herald wrote. But then she did have an in: as we've posted, she's the wife of the incumbent President, Néstor Kirchner.
Halfway across the globe, in Ukraine, it looks as if a woman's about to become head of government. Official results just released show that "the pro-West Orange Revolution parties" had won a razor-thin majority of seats in Verkhovna Rada, the parliament, thus paving the way for the return as Prime Minister of the woman whom the Associated Press described as "the charismatic Yulia Tymoshenko." As posted here, Tymoshenko (right) had held that post January to September of 2005.

Déjà vu all over again

Sound familiar? The 1st Lady of a major American democracy is a Senator representing one of the largest metropolitan areas in her country. And now she's running for the Presidency following her husband's departure from that office.
No, we're not talking about that former 1st couple of the the United States.
Aides to Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina, confirmed yesterday that although he will not seek another term in the Oct. 28 election, his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (left), Senator for the province including the capital city of Buenos Aires, will seek to succeed him.
Though a novelty in the United States, the phenomenon of household dynasty is not unknown elsewhere. This year's unsuccessful candidate for the French Presidency, Ségolène Royal, separated from her longtime partner, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, amid speculation that he wants to run in the next Présidentielle. The notion that a wife might take her husband's seat is not unfamiliar to South Americans, either:
►Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martinez de Perón, served a turbulent term as interim President of Argentina until she was deposed in a military coup in 1976.
►Following the death of President Cheddi Jagan, voters elected Janet Jagan President of Guyana in 1997; she resigned for health reasons 2 years later.
Indeed, Chile's President since 2006, Michelle Bachelet (right), a single mother, is the only woman to have been elected head of state in the region without marital link to a former President.