Convinced that he has the presidency within reach, the ultra-liberal populist Javier Milei appealed to one of the golden rules when he is in the final stretch of a campaign: do not make waves, do not scare, do not make mistakes, the important thing is now It’s done. So it was that he appeared in the presidential debate this Sunday with thin-framed glasses and a calm tone that contrasts with the inflamed verb and insults that made him popular among many Argentines.
Milei emerged alive from the almost two hours of debate in Santiago del Estero, the oldest city in Argentina. Alive, like the Peronist Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy of out-of-control inflation, and unlike Patricia Bullrich, the candidate of the social-liberal coalition Together for Change (JxC), who left doubts among her own and others, although this Monday she said she had debated affected by “a very strong flu.”
In a night of 45 ratings – an enormity – the three main candidates for the presidency were closely scrutinized. That Myriam Bregman, candidate of the left, was the most skillful and incisive in the debate, or that the centrist Juan Schiaretti said interesting things will not change the fact that in the race for the Casa Rosada there are only three who can cross the line first. goal.
Bregman, however, left the phrase of the night by mocking the “lion” image with which the ultraliberal presents himself: “Milei is not a lion, he is a cuddly kitten of economic power.”
Not having lost control or shouting was thus the great fact in Milei’s favor, which gives an idea of ??the tone of the campaign ahead of the elections on October 22 and the eventual runoff on November 19. This Sunday there will be a second debate.
“I come from the academy. It is a profile much more similar to that of the debate than to the guy who has to fight. And you are not the same person at all times. Suppose you like the carnival, you are not going to be dressed in the same clothes. from the troupe to the office”, was the explanation offered this Monday by the economist, who had, however, three moments of fragility.
One was when Bullrich criticized him that his proposal for a “voucher” through which parents will decide which schools to send their children to is destructive for large, sparsely populated areas of the country, such as the north and Patagonia.
“Milei, you don’t care about education. Go with the vouchers to Puna, where there is only one school. With the voucher what you are going to achieve is more inequality,” said Bullrich about the student subsidy system, similar to that of Chili. “You propose a model that can only be proposed in the city of Buenos Aires. We defend the public school for all, the Sarmiento school.”
Another moment that destabilized Milei was when Massa demanded that he apologize to Pope Francis, whom he defined as the “most important Argentine in history.”
“If I’m wrong I have no problem saying that I am sorry for that. I said that if the Pope wanted to come (to Argentina) he would be respected as head of state and leader of the Catholic Church,” he responded while Massa harassed him outside. microphone: “Do it, do it, do it,” the Peronist repeated.
“Let me speak and be respectful,” Milei demanded of the current Minister of Economy: “I said that if the Pope wanted to come to Argentina, I was going to respect him. Stop chicanering (tangling) and dedicate yourself to lowering inflation and ending your government in a decent manner.”
Milei defined the Pope as “the evil one” years ago, but two weeks ago, during an interview with the ultra-conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson, he again harshly attacked the head of the Catholic Church: “The Pope plays politically, he has strong political interference , has shown great affinity with dictators like Castro and Maduro, is on the side of bloody dictatorships.”
The other major controversy in which Milei was involved had to do with the number of missing people during the last military dictatorship (1976-83). Historically, there is talk of 30,000 people, although the National Commission for the Disappearance of People (Conadep), created by Raúl Alfonsín, offered in September 1984 the figure of 8,960 missing persons, a number that appears in the prologue of the famous book “No more.” This figure refers only to disappearances during the dictatorship; it is estimated that during the previous Peronist government, from 1973 to 1976, there were hundreds of disappearances.
Milei recovered the issue and went further by referring to the role of the armed organizations of the Peronist left, sent to trial in 1984 by Alfonsín together with the Military Juntas, in trials that ended in exemplary prison sentences. Between 1989 and 1990, the Peronist Carlos Menem pardoned everyone, military and guerrillas. Graciela Fernández Meijide, former minister and parliamentarian and mother of a missing person, said at the time that the figure of 30,000 was an agreement by human rights organizations to be able to raise the figure of “genocide” abroad and obtain more support.
“There were 8,753 and not 30,000. It is a kind of false dilemma. We believe that during the dictatorship the entire democratic order was violated. Second issue: the State has a monopoly on violence. When it goes to war with irregular formations it does not merit, It does not enable him to commit excesses. These excesses have to be condemned. We consider that the excesses of the dictatorship have to be condemned, there is no denial of that. What we say is that the terrorists must also be condemned.”
The word “excesses” was the one used by the military themselves to refer to the murders and disappearances, but Milei, who has strong ties with the military starting with his candidate for vice president, Victoria Villarroel, did not flinch: “I adhere to the idea “from memory, those of truth and justice. You cannot close the wounds of the past if you lie about the number of missing people.”