The great lessons from President Cristina Kirchner: n history, you always must be bigger still – more generous, more thoughtful, more thankful."

Cristina Kirchner re-elected as Argentina's president in landslide | World news | guardian.co.uk: "The Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, has been re-elected with one of the widest victory margins in the country's history, a triumph that vindicated her message that she is best able to keep spreading the wealth of an economic boom.

Kirchner had nearly 54% of the votes cast in Sunday's election after almost 97% of polling stations had reported. Her nearest challenger got just under 17%.

"We need everyone to comprehend … that because of the popular will and this political decision, you can count on me to continue deepening this national project for the 40 million Argentines," she vowed in her victory speech before thousands of supporters on Sunday night.

The goal of this "project" is to profoundly change society by using Argentina's resources to raise incomes, create jobs, restore the country's industrial capacity, reduce poverty and maintain an economic boom that has seen the country grow and reduce poverty."

Since she and her predecessor as president, her husband Néstor Kirchner, first moved into Argentina's presidential palace in 2003, the income gap between the country's rich and poor has been reduced by nearly half. Meanwhile, according to the International Monetary Fund's numbers for 2002-2011, Argentina's real GDP has grown 94%, the fastest in the western hemisphere and about twice the rate of Brazil, which has also grown substantially, the economist Mark Weisbrot said.

The US president, Barack Obama, "could take a lesson from this", said Weisbrot, co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. "It's an old-fashioned message of democracy: you deliver what you promise and people vote for you. It's kind of forgotten here in the US."

Kirchner noted that she is Latin America's first woman to be re-elected as president, but described the victory as bittersweet, since Kirchner, who died of a heart attack almost a year ago, wasn't there to share it.

"This man who transformed Argentina led us all and gave everything he had and more," she said. "Without him, without his valour and courage, it would have been impossible to get to this point."

Thousands of jubilant, flag-waving people crowded into the capital's historic Plaza de Mayo to watch on a huge TV screen as she spoke from a downtown hotel, where her supporters interrupted so frequently with their chants that she told them off. She said: "The worst that people can be is small. In history, you always must be bigger still – more generous, more thoughtful, more thankful."