Friday, three in the afternoon. The electoral ban is now in force in Argentina. A cardiologist speaks on the radio and explains how he and his colleagues overcome the obstacles to imports that have turned the third largest economy in Latin America into a country in which practically nothing from outside enters anymore. Catheters do not arrive, for example. How then do Argentine doctors, a reference in the region for their seriousness and talent, make catheterizations? “We reuse them, they are of very good quality. Of course, we should not do it more than three times,” explains the doctor.
Few examples are clearer of how much Argentina has at stake today in the most uncertain elections in 40 years of democracy. The terrifying economic crisis left by the Government of Alberto Fernández has a first and last name: Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy for 14 months, one month. The country exceeds 40% poor, 130% annual inflation and shows very clear signs of launching into its third hyperinflation in 34 years. Massa is, however, the candidate of the ruling Peronism, and insists that on December 10 he will sit in the main office of the Casa Rosada.
Unlike catheters, which should only be used once, Massa is a candidate for recycling in several directions. He was protected by the Kirchners, an enemy of the Kirchners and today the last hope of the Kirchners, absent from the electoral campaign in the face of what is shaping up to be the worst defeat in the history of Peronism. He already was in the primaries on August 13, when he obtained 28.8% and a third position, behind Patricia Bullrich (29.6) and the winner, Javier Milei (31.6).
Beyond Massa’s insistence that he will be in a runoff on November 19, there are no obvious reasons for this to happen. The problem in this Sunday’s election is that the obvious is not enough.
Years ago, a candidate who sang “I am the king of a lost world” and proposed blowing up the Central Bank, in addition to theorizing about a free sale market for human organs, would have had no success, it would have been considered just a bad dream. But, today, that candidate has a first and last name, Javier Milei, he has just won the primaries on August 13 and is the favorite at the polls.
Favorite to win in the first round? “First round, the whore who gave birth to him,” Milei sang insistently from the stage at Wednesday’s campaign closing ceremony, which included the proposal to sever relations with the Vatican as long as Francis remains at the helm. That the Pope is Argentine, something that had not occurred in two millennia of papacy and that who knows if it will ever be repeated, is a minor detail, an issue ignored in the midst of the anthropophagic tone frenzy that is political life in Argentina. A country in which the main political leaders do not speak among themselves and only exchange messages, sometimes threats, other times insults, through social networks and television.
Javier Milei, a 52-year-old economist who until two years ago was out of politics, became popular on television shows from which, with shouts, foul language and almost limitless histrionics, he jumped onto social networks to become everything. a phenomenon. Most young people love him. And parts of the lower and lower-middle classes turned their backs on Peronism to also embrace the creed of the ultra-liberal populist who proposes dollarizing the economy and has people around him who want to sanction a law that exempts men who are exempt from paternal duties. prove in court that their condom was punctured by women eager to get pregnant.
Massa proposes himself as the barrier for Milei, but the one who has the best conditions to do so is Patricia Bullrich, candidate of the social-liberal coalition Together for Change (JxC). After a bad start to the campaign, handcuffed by advisors who took away her naturalness and prevented her from criticizing Milei, Mauricio Macri’s former Security Minister recovered the strength that made her known and popular. He still has diction and fluency problems in his speech, but no one doubts what he says: Massa cannot be awarded the Presidency because he represents “the mafia”, and Milei should not reach the Casa Rosada because he is too close to being an undemocratic leader.
Even so, the country holds its breath before what Milei is capable of doing, who, after years saying all the atrocities that can be imagined in the worst of possible tones, has spent two months of moderation and thin-framed glasses to make himself less indigestible before those who view his ideas with sympathy, but his forms with horror.
The country holds its breath before Milei… and before the economic chaos that is coming. It was evident at the beginning of Friday night when walking along the pedestrian Florida, once a proud promenade in the center of the city, today very much in decline.
Half words emerged from the trees, some of them even came slightly closer to the passer-by. Trees that talk and move? In Argentina, people who quietly transmit the clandestine exchange rate of the moment are called little trees, that big question that every Argentine asks themselves every day. How much is the dollar? In this case, many little trees are Venezuelans, all of them experts in pulverizing the value of the national currency.
It was the end of a week in which the still minister and candidate Massa filled the financial center of the capital with police and public finance inspectors. The objective, to prevent the dollar from continuing to climb beyond 1,000 pesos. At the beginning of the month it was at 840, and this Friday it was already close to 1,100. And on Monday, once the result is known?
If Milei achieves his dream of winning the first round, the uncertainty will be enormous and the markets will probably be shaken. They will also do it with Massa out of the runoff, since the man in charge of the economy will have been disavowed.
The hypothesis that would apparently generate the least disruption is that of a runoff between Milei and Bullrich, although the truth is that in the bunkers of each formation everything is uncertainty: “From what we are seeing, anyone could be first and anyone could be third. Everything “It is possible in this election. Anyone who tells you that they know what is going to happen is lying to you.”