First data; Kirchnerism is coming to an end after 20 years dominating Argentine politics, Cristina Kirchner now has little to say or do. Second fact: Peronism has made the worst election in its history. Third fact: the traditional opposition, grouped in the social-liberal coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), has slipped in a black swan, a Javier Milei who has turned the country’s politics and economy upside down, an ultraliberal who dreams, and rightly so, by settling in on December 10 in the main office of the Casa Rosada.
“I am ready to govern today,” said the 52-year-old economist on Monday, before the financial markets opened and showed the much-feared abyss: a 22% devaluation of the peso, a fall in bonds and Argentine shares on the Wall Street, fierce remarking of prices in shops and industries or even worse, the refusal to sell some products. August inflation, analysts forecast, will exceed the 10% figure. Let it be understood correctly: monthly inflation.
“Suppliers do not answer,” a merchant admitted on television in the middle of a Monday without reference values, without prices.
Milei won the primaries, but the fierce Argentina showed her almost immediately all the problems she will face if she finally comes to power. In the country with 130% annual inflation, in the country with a GDP per capita that is the same as in 1974, in the country with 60% child poverty, shout that the Central Bank is going to be blown up and that the economy will be dollarized enough to obtain 30% of the votes and win the presidential primaries, which is what happened this Sunday. But that alone is not enough.
Jorge Liotti, a political analyst for the newspaper La Nación and author of the book La última encrucijada, had warned of the possibility of an “ambush” by voters of the two large coalitions. And the ambush happened: Peronism lost the governorship of the province of Santa Cruz, the genesis of Kirchnerism three decades ago, is threatened in its once powerful strongholds on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and could lose the province of the same name.
But the ambush also surprised the opposition. MIlei, an ultraliberal who would practically abolish the State if he could, won with 30.04%, followed by 28.27 percent of Together for Change (JxC) and 27.27% of Peronism, which competed under the seal of Union for the Fatherland. Together for Change, a social-liberal coalition that ruled between 2015 and 2019 with Mauricio Macri, believed they had won the elections, but the very poor performance of Horacio Rdoríguez Larreta, the mayor of Buenos Aires, prevented that victory.
Rodríguez Larreta, from the coalition’s possibilist and slightly social democratic wing, fell clearly to Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former Security Minister and representative of the coalition’s toughest wing, something that was reflected in his campaign slogan: Either it’s all or it’s nothing.
Bullrich is quite a political phenomenon: in the 1970s, as part of the Peronist Youth (JP), he sympathized with the armed group Montoneros, or even, according to his biographers, he belonged to it. She denies it, and today she is a right-wing politician who grew in popularity after her time at the Ministry of Security. Her challenge now is threefold: integrate Rodríguez Larreta’s sector, be the preferred option for the majority of those who will vote on October 22 in the presidential elections and did not do so in the primaries and, above all, thread a coherent economic discourse. .
“With bimonetarism, prices adjust immediately,” Bullrich said in 2022 during an interview with EL MUNDO. “The only way to end inflation is to end the deficit,” he added.
But Bullrich is not an economist and it is difficult for him to be clear in his proposal for a bi-monetary economy, especially before a Milei who would be the first economist since 1983 to reach the Presidency.
The dispute for October will focus on the economy, with insecurity and crime problems in the background, a fishing ground in which Bullrich does have an advantage.
On the other hand, defending rights is not an issue that will move the needle in the battle for the Casa Rosada. The singer Andrés Calamaro made his colleague Lali Esposito see it in a significant counterpoint of tweets. “It is really sad that there are people who vote for an anti-right,” wrote the Argentine. Calamaro sees it differently: “Dear Lali, in our country there is no right to save, opt for housing, education or projects. Slogans are of no use to us.”
After the impressive success of Milei, social networks exploded with comments for and against. There were those who raised a problem of misinformation or fake news that is not real. Unlike the campaigns that brought Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro to the Presidency in their countries, in Argentina there is no fake news campaign that drives Milei. What drives him is the clarity of his proposal: dollarize, blow up the Central Bank, put an end to the “political caste.”
“Milei is a right-wing populist, as well as ultraliberal,” Juan Luis González, author of a biography of Milei whose name does not admit too many doubts, told EL MUNDO: El loco.
These proposals are as clear as they are vague in several aspects, but they seduced citizens exhausted by a succession of governments that have not offered the expected solutions. Being against abortion and public education did not stop Milei from winning the election.
“We are facing the end of the caste model, that model based on an atrocity that says that where there is a need there is a right, but forgets that someone has to pay for that right,” said Milei, who won on 16 the 24 districts of the country.
The results of the primaries mark an ideological slide towards center-right, liberal and hard-right positions that were not precisely those that predominated in the democratic era that began in 1983 in Argentina. And they reward outsiders, those who did not control the apparatus of their parties or were part of the political status quo.
“The surprise is the growth of Milei, demonstrating the anger there is with politics. I warned it a long time ago,” ex-president Macri said with a grim gesture to the news signal TN.
“You have to jump, you have to jump, Kirchnerism no longer exists!” The youngest celebrated in a state of euphoria in the JxC bunker. But behind that euphoria, somewhat faked, is the concern of Bullrich and of those who must now design his campaign.
Turnout to the polls is expected to grow strongly in October, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for a presidential race that is far from being defined, but in which the clear favorite has a first and last name: Javier Milei.
