In 1908, the Colón theater in Buenos Aires was inaugurated with Aída, by Giuseppe Verdi. In 2023, from the orchestra pit, a violinist began to play the chords of the Peronist March in that same Colón theater. A lot has changed in Argentina in 115 years, but no one expected such a disruption in one of the great lyrical temples of the world. It happened on Friday night, when Colón was divided between support and boos for Javier Milei, the ultra-liberal populist candidate who had attended the screening of Madame Butterfly. Nothing like this had ever happened before, politics had never entered the scene like that there before.
Hours after the Colón scandal, the authorities confirmed the arrest of five people for serious threats on social networks to the Peronist candidate, Sergio Massa, and his family.
With these precedents, many Argentines feared that this Sunday, when it is decided between Milei and Massa, some things would get out of control. This was not the case: the Argentine electoral system once again showed its solidity, and the speculations about fraud that La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Milei’s party, started in recent days, proved unfounded.
“The elections are taking place normally, and that is also important after so many things that were raised,” Massa said after voting at a school in Tigre, a city 30 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. “It is an extremely important election that defines which country we are going to navigate in the next four years.”
Milei, who was wearing a black leather jacket and had her hair curly and messy, also highlighted the good progress of the elections that called 35.4 million Argentines to the polls.
“We are very calm, we have made all the effort we could make. Let the polls speak,” said the populist ultra-liberal after voting at one of the headquarters of the National Technological University (UTN).
Milei smiled when she heard that former president Mauricio Macri pointed out that there were very few LLA ballots at his voting center. “Well, they might be in the polls already!”
“We did an enormous job despite the campaign of fear and all the dirty campaign that they have done to us. Let’s hope that tomorrow there will be more hope and not so much continuity of decay,” added Milei, whom most surveys indicate with a slight advantage in the election.
The vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, voted in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz and has highlighted the fact that the Presidency will be defined in a second round.
“It is the second time in democracy that we have a second round, it is very strong, right? They vote very quickly, so we hope to know the results very quickly as well,” he added.
The estimate of the electoral authorities is that a clear trend could be advanced around 9:00 p.m. local time in Argentina (1:00 a.m. on Monday in Spain).
Victoria Villarruel, the candidate for vice president of Milei, has highlighted the inspection work that has been carried out this Sunday.
“What we take away from this campaign is the immense fervor of society to supervise, to control the elections. There are young people of 16 or 17 years old who are voting for the first time and are collaborating with the supervision,” said Villarruel.
“Two ideas are at play, the continuity of a system that has led us to poverty or a change that aims for freedom, progress and for the Argentine people to be dignified through their work,” he added.
Milei’s number two has not only highlighted the good progress of the electoral process: she has also unleashed controversy with some unexpectedly virulent statements. It was due to the presence of protesters, several of them relatives of those who disappeared during the dictatorship that ruled the country between 1976 and 1983. They blamed Villarruel, whom they called a “denialist”, for justifying that dictatorship and ignoring the drama of the missing.
“Today is the day of democracy, any other claim is out of place. I regret that the tranquility of the neighbors is disturbed. The Argentine people, the common citizen, signed up to supervise the entire country. We, unlike the political caste, we respect democracy. It is the first time that the daughter of a veteran of the Falklands War, of a military man, becomes vice president. I don’t know what bothers them, who have had children of terrorists and terrorists with government positions.
“Those who are bothered by the fact that democracy includes all of us are the violent ones. And painting graffiti in the middle of a kindergarten about the 30,000 [disappeared] is like going to a cemetery and painting Barney Bear, more misplaced people can’t be be there,” Villarruel concluded, in statements that raised dust on social networks.
One of the great unknowns of the election is the volume of blank votes. The fact that 23.8% voted for Patricia Bullrich in the first round in October, a candidate who was left out of the second round, left many Argentines who refuse to support Massa or Milei politically orphaned. Voting blank is the alternative for these voters, or even not going to vote in a country where voting is mandatory, although the fines for not doing so are purely symbolic.
Bullrich, like Macri, campaigned for Milei with the goal of ending the Kirchnerist governments that dominated 16 of the last 20 years of Argentine politics. Macri’s former minister also provided oversight strength to prevent the theft of ballots that milleism feared.
When the winner is defined, there will only be three weeks for the president-elect to prepare his government team for the inauguration on December 10 and the many measures he will have to take to redirect a crazy economy, with 143% annual inflation and 43% poverty.
MIlei proposes an absolute change, an ultraliberal economy in which the US dollar replaces the peso and the Central Bank is closed. Massa, who is the Minister of Economy, proposes continuity, with an economy with a strong presence of the State and corporations.
“The elections have a revealing effect in this dark Argentina,” said analyst Jorge Liotti. “Suddenly the curtain rises and a president emerges who until now was difficult to identify, who in 20 days must articulate a team, a speech and an action plan.”
