Nestor Kirchner is taking on the corrupt police force in his biggest gamble yet
Nestor Kirchner has coasted relatively unscathed through his first six months as president of Argentina, winning broad popular support by leading an assault on an entrenched political elite dominated by his own Peronist party.
But the honeymoon appears to be coming to an end.
In a gambit some analysts have deemed his riskiest yet, Mr Kirchner is vying to clean up the police force in Buenos Aires province, which is closely linked to his party and is suspected of profiting from car thefts, drug trafficking, prostitution and kidnappings.
The move threatens to unleash a power struggle within the party that brought him to the presidency and that, until now, has provided him with critical political support.
'The president and his administration seem convinced that no real solution exists for the problem [of crime] if there is not frontal combat against corruption,' wrote Eduardo van der Kooy, a columnist for national newspaper Clarin. But 'any rupture [in the Peronist party] could be risky for a government that has much more support in the airy consensus of society than party and power structures'.