By Fiona Ortiz
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, husband of President Cristina Fernandez and a prominent political player, underwent successful emergency surgery on his carotid artery on Sunday, officials said.
Kirchner, 59, was sworn in as a member of Congress in the lower house in December and is widely expected to run for president again in 2011, even though his wife's approval ratings have dropped to around 20 percent.
Argentines refer to the Kirchners as the "presidential couple" and they are thought of as running Latin America's No. 3 economy together from the presidential palace.
Over the past week Kirchner actively lobbied legislators and provincial governors to back his wife's controversial plan to use Central Bank foreign currency reserves to pay debt.
"Everything is fine, it's good news," Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana told reporters outside the hospital. Local media reported the surgery lasted 90 minutes.
An official news release said the surgery had been successfully completed on Kirchner's carotid artery, a main artery in the neck that carries blood to the head.
Kirchner, a lawyer and former governor from the southern province of Santa Cruz, led Argentina from 2003-2007, overseeing a booming economic rebound after the country's wrenching political crisis and massive debt default in 2001-2002.
Kirchner, who refers to himself as a "penguin" because of the penguin colonies in his home province, has been criticized for building a real estate and hotel business in Patagonia.
He has also been under fire for buying $2 million (1.3 million pounds) on the foreign exchange market in late 2008 to purchase a hotel just as the Central Bank was pouring dollars into the market to keep the Argentine peso from depreciating.
STATE ROLE IN ECONOMY
During his presidency, the centre-left leader kept the peso weak to stimulate industry, increased state participation in various economic sectors, instituted heavy subsidies of energy and transportation and used price controls to tame inflation while the economy expanded at about 8 percent a year.
Fernandez has struggled to match Kirchner's popularity due to high inflation and the economic crisis. Many Argentines became disenchanted with the couple's confrontational leadership style after a prolonged conflict with the farm sector in 2008.
Kirchner also heads the Peronist party, but there is a large dissident movement within the Peronists that often votes with the opposition in Congress.
He was known for very public battles with companies and institutions when he was president.
He went on television to call for a national boycott against an oil company that refused to respect price controls and he frequently criticized the International Monetary Fund, blaming its policies for leading to Argentina's economic meltdown in 2001.
Under Kirchner, Argentina used Central Bank reserves to pay off all of its debt to the IMF, in part to free the country from periodic evaluations of its economic health.
Together, the Kirchners have also battled the country's biggest media group, Grupo Clarin. They have pushed a new media law to break up some of its holdings, frequently criticized its editorial stance and have asked for a court intervention in the group's printing paper company.
(Additional reporting by Guido Nejamkis, Editing by Chris Wilson)