Argentina's Kirchner goes on offensive over graft trial

ArgentineVice President CristinaKirchnerlaunched a long and politically charged defense Tuesday against corruption charges, for which prosecutors have asked that she face 12 years in jail and a lifetime ban from politics.

Kirchner, 69, is accused of fraudulently awarding public works contracts in her stronghold in Patagonia.

She said Tuesday in a live social media broadcast that her political ideology, Peronism, wasontrialand that prosecutors had already "written thesentence."

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"Nothing, absolutely nothing that they have said was proven," saidKirchner, a lawyer by trade who was president from 2007 to 2015 having succeeded her late husband, NestorKirchner.

It was during those three presidential terms that the allegedgraftoccurred.

"It's not atrialagainst me, it's atrialof Peronism, of the national and popular governments," she said, brandishing during her 90-minute speech excerpts from laws, press articles, emails and accounts.

"It is 12 years (of prison time requested), the 12 years of the best governmentArgentinahas had in these last decades."

Kirchnerwas speaking from her office at the senate, where she is the president and for which she enjoys parliamentary immunity.

Even if convicted -- theverdictis expected at the end of the year -- she would not go to prison, unless hersentencewere ratified by the country's supreme court, or she loses her senate seat at the next elections at the end of 2023.

Another dozen people areontrialalongside the vice president and their court statements are due to last weeks.

Kirchnerhas decided to mount her defenseonsocial media after her request for an extra deposition was refusedonMonday.

Several hundred supporters cheered her arrival at the senateonTuesday, while others did the same as she left her home in an upmarket Buenos Aires neighborhood.

And Justice Minister Martin Soria himself slammed the proceedings, saying "the lack of impartiality of the court and of the prosecutors has been exposed."

He accused them of having denied givingKirchnerthe chance to "defend herself" by rejecting her request for additional testimony.

Such is her divisive nature that rival groups of protesters, those for and against her, congregated outside her home Monday night after public prosecutor Diego Luciani requested she be sentenced to 12 years in jail and barred from politics for life.

Police were forced to intervene as tensions mounted.

Luciani hit out at "an authentic system of institutional corruption" which he said was "probably the biggest corruption operation the country has known."

OnTuesday, fellow South American left-wing former presidents, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, expressed their support forKirchner.