Back home, Fernandez’s populist vice president took to the microphone to make one thing clear. “We can’t pay because we don’t have the money,” said Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who held the nation’s top job from 2007 to 2015. The IMF’s terms are “unacceptable.” READ MORE: Argentina Can’t Repay IMF $45 Billion, Vice President Says It was a telling moment. When Fernandez, 62, took office in the final days of 2019, he presented himself as pragmatic. True, he’d briefly been Kirchner’s chief of staff within the Peronist left but he accepted a role for capitalism and wouldn’t allow Kirchner and her loyalists to set the agenda.