The Justicialist Party (Spanish: Partido Justicialista, PJ) is a Peronist political party from Argentina. It is the largest party, and is led by Eduardo Fellner. The current president Néstor Kirchner and former president Carlos Menem are members.
It was founded in 1945 by Juan Domingo Perón. It is a laborer's party, theoretically on 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.
