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Argentina’s president mimicks Chinese accent in tweet

Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is in hot water after making fun of Chinese accents on Twitter while on official business in the country. In a tweet on Wednesday, first reported by Bloomberg , she wrote about her trip, replacing “r”s with “l”s in the words arroz (rice) and petróleo (petroleum). “Are they all with La Campola. Or Did they only come for lice and petloleum?” Fernandez wrote in Spanish on her Twitter account in reference to 1,000 businessmen who attended a conference where she spoke. It was a play on a political joke from home: her detractors say that her supporters only attend party events so they can get a free sandwich and a soda. A minute later, she apologised.

Sorry. You know what? It’s just that the ridiculousness and absurdity is so high, that it can only be understood through humor.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner via Twitter

Since last year, Fernandez has been working with Chinese President Xi Jinping on a currency swap to get cash to her country and replenish Argentina’s notoriously low reserves. Kirchner said she had been determined to make the trip to China despite being advised not to travel by doctors because she is still recovering from breaking her ankle. Fernandez, who will leave office after elections in October, had signed 15 agreements with Xi on issues ranging from nuclear energy to agriculture as part of her four-day state visit to the world’s second-largest economy. But the gaffe was badly timed with Argentina looking to China for loans to bolster a currency that’s slumped 23 per cent against the dollar last year. 61-year-old Kirchner is Argentina’s first elected woman president, a lawyer and former lawmaker who succeeded her husband, the late president Nestor Kirchner. Kirchner is already under the spotlight at home after the suspicious death of a prosecutor and on a mission to China to expand trade and political ties.