AFP

Buenos Aires

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner underwent surgery yesterday to remove a blood clot on the surface of her brain less than three weeks before crucial mid-term legislative elections.

A government spokesman said the surgery was successful and a medical report described her as “evolving favourably” in an intensive care unit at a private hospital in Buenos Aires.

The surgery was performed “without complications,” the report said. “It went very well. The president is in good spirits and is already in her room,” said undersecretary for public communication Alfredo Scoccimarro.

Kirchner, 60, was diagnosed over the weekend with a “chronic subdural hematoma” resulting from a blow to the head sustained in a fall in mid-August. She was hospitalised on Monday after experiencing tingling in her left arm and muscle weakness, prompting her doctors to order surgery to drain the hematoma lodged between the brain and its outer casing.

Youthful supporters of the president gathered outside the Fundacion Favaloro university hospital where they left flowers and get-well messages around a flag-draped photograph of Kirchner and her late husband Nestor, who preceded her as president.

‘Strength, Cristina,’ ‘The country and the youth are with you,’ and ‘You are irreplaceable,’ read placards.

Kirchner has had several bouts of low blood pressure since coming to office in 2007, and underwent surgery in 2012 to remove her thyroid glands after being misdiagnosed as having cancer.

The current medical setback comes at a sensitive political moment, with Argentines going to the polls on October 27 to cast ballot in legislative elections that will set the political direction for the country halfway through Kirchner’s second and last term.

At stake are half the seats in the lower house of Congress and a third of the senate.

Kirchner’s Peronist party currently controls both houses, but showed signs of weakness in primaries earlier this year.

Vice President Amado Boudou, a former economy minister from 2009 to 2011, has assumed leadership of the government in Kirchner’s absence, although without a formal transfer of presidential powers.

Boudou visited Kirchner on Monday night in hospital, after he announced at an official event that she had asked him to keep the government running. Kirchner herself has not been seen in public since the government announced on Saturday that doctors had ordered her to rest for a month.