Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof said on Saturday that former President Cristina Kirchner is “unjustly imprisoned” and told a Peronist rally that the party will win in 2027, without announcing a candidacy.

Kicillof spoke at a sports and events center in González Catán, in La Matanza, a Peronist stronghold in Greater Buenos Aires. The event marked Loyalty Day, the Peronist holiday on Oct. 17 that recalls the 1945 march that freed Juan Perón. It was held by the Buenos Aires branch of the Justicialist Party, known as the PJ, the main Peronist party, which Kicillof leads.

Kicillof said Peronism must build “an alternative” next year to end what he called the “disaster” of President Milei’s government at the ballot box. He called the day “the starting line for the triumph that awaits us in 2027.”

“Count on me to put my body on the line, to travel the country, to take on the responsibilities that fall to us,” he said. He also said that “without social justice there is no true freedom,” rejected orders from abroad, naming the United States and Israel, and closed by cheering Perón, Eva Perón, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner. Kicillof had already challenged Milei on a trip to New York in September.

Kirchner, a two-term president who later served as vice president, has been under house arrest in her Buenos Aires apartment since June 2025, serving a six-year sentence for fraud in public works contracts. She is also barred for life from holding public office. Her allies have taken her ban from office to the United Nations.

The PJ issued a statement the same day under the line “Yesterday for Perón, today for Cristina.” It compared her case to Perón’s arrest in 1945 and said: “It is not about justice, it is about proscription,” which the party describes as a ban meant to keep her from power. It called on supporters to fight for her freedom.

The party did not appear together. Kirchner’s son Máximo Kirchner, who leads La Cámpora, the Kirchnerite youth group, spoke in the northern province of Chaco and kept pushing his mother’s candidacy. Sergio Massa, who heads the Renovador Front faction, posted a video of Perón urging unity. No leaders of La Cámpora or of Massa’s faction attended Kicillof’s event, Letra P reported.

In the afternoon, Kirchner’s supporters gathered outside her apartment at San José 1111.