Why this Sunday’s elections in Argentina defy political logic

In a country in serious economic crisis, the person responsible for managing the economy is the presidential candidate of the Peronist ruling party.

A candidate with a past in the Peronist Youth appeals to the anti-Peronist vote.

And a libertarian without a party structure, who calls the local currency “feces” and displays a chainsaw as a symbol of his plan to deforest the state, is emerging as the favorite in the polls.

Whichever way you look at it, the elections that Argentina will hold next Sunday seem to defy the country’s political logic.

“This is the most disruptive election, the one that will bring about the strongest change since at least 1946,” Argentine political analyst Rosendo Fraga told BBC Mundo.

We advise

Grafton: the libertarian experiment in a US city that resulted in a major fiasco

3 keys to understand the unprecedented results of Argentina’s primaries (after Milei’s victory)

How feasible is Milei’s proposed dollarization of Argentina and how does it compare to that of Ecuador?

How Argentina Came Out of ‘Hyperinflation’ Thirty Years Ago (and How Feasible It Would Be to Use the Same Solution Today)

3 instead of 2

The context in which Argentinians will elect their future president, half of their deputies and a third of the Senate is itself atypical.

The elections are different from previous ones, because according to the polls this time there are not two but three the presidential candidates with the possibility of being elected or going to a second round.

This is the anti-system Javier Milei, who surprised by getting the most votes in the August primaries; the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, and the conservative Patricia Bullrich.

According to Fraga, the fact that there are three options that have a chance of winning points is the crisis of the political order that has existed in the country since the emergence of Peronism as the dominant force in the mid-1940s.

“Since then, Argentine politics has had two axes: Peronism and anti-Peronism,” he emphasizes.

“This is what has changed at this point: we had a three-thirds (primary) election and a candidate emerged who is neither Peronist nor anti-Peronist, namely Milei,” he adds.

If no one manages to be elected on Sunday with at least 45% of the vote, or 40% and 10 points ahead of his immediate successor, a second round would take place on November 19 between the two who come out on top.

The Milei Factor, anti-system with a chainsaw

With an aggressive speech against what he calls ‘political caste’, Milei is often compared to the former far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro or the American Donald Trump, whom he says he admires.

Since winning his first election as deputy candidate two years ago, this self-styled anarcho-capitalist economist has achieved a rise that is ‘hard to imagine’ for someone with his characteristics, supported by frustrated voters under the age of thirty, says Orlando. D’Adamo., an Argentinian expert in public opinion and political psychology.

Milei’s vote in the primaries at the head of his faction La Libertad Avanza also challenges an old plan in Argentina, according to which the poor vote more for Peronism and the rich for anti-Peronism.

“Their voice extends across all social classes,” D’Adamo told BBC Mundo.

“Even,” he adds, “it is striking enough, given what many people interpret from the theory, that in the federal capital, where he should have done better, he did worse.”

His promises to dollarize the economy and close the Central Bank appear to have resonated with an electorate going to the polls against the backdrop of the country’s economic decline. with 40% of the population below the poverty line and annual inflation reaching 138% in Septemberas shown by official figures.

Mass, official and opposition

With this panorama, the fact that someone of Massa’s position is the candidate to succeed unpopular President Alberto Fernández for the Peronist coalition in government, the Union for the Homeland, is seen as striking even by some of its regional allies.

“Argentina is something that is indecipherable,” José “Pepe” Mujica, the left-wing former president of Uruguay, said this week. “How do you explain that the Minister of Economy, with inflation like that in Argentina, is going to fight for the presidency?”

His own response: “Because he has the support of something he disagrees with, but which will vote for him, namely Peronism. Because that animal exists: It is a mythology that the Argentine people have. So that breaks all plans.”

Founded by General Juan Domingo Perón in the middle of the last century, Peronism has had an enormous capacity to regenerate itself politically.

It achieved this validity despite all its internal divisions or even because of them (Perón is credited with the expression that Peronists are like cats: “it seems that we fight and in reality we reproduce”).

This explains why Massa has sought a difficult balance and is visible at the same time as a representative and alternative to the government that he integrates.

Last month he stated on the LN+ channel that of the current cabinet members “at least half would not be ministers” with him as president.

He has also emphasized that he took on economic leadership in the middle of an emergency, rather than “crawling under the bed.”

Although Massa is ranked second in several voting intention polls, it is unknown how economic decline and recent scandals in Buenos Aires province, a Peronist bastion that collects almost 40% of the vote, will ultimately affect him.

One of those scandals was the dismissal of the provincial chief of staff, Martín Insaurralde, from the same coalition as Massa, after photos were revealed showing him in Marbella on board a luxurious yacht called “Bandido”, together with a model and serving champagne .

In the last debate of presidential candidates, this matter was explicitly mentioned by Bullrich, former Minister of Security in the government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019).

Bullrich, from Peronism to anti-Peronism

Peronism’s ability to reproduce has also led many Peronist politicians to later join other parties.

Despite Milei’s statements against “the caste”, the candidate of the Together for Change coalition accused him of filling his lists with old figures from the Peronist apparatus, such as the unionist Luis Barrionuevo, author of one of the most emblematic statements of Argentine politics in the United States. ’90: “We should try not to steal at least two years in this country.”

“You also have a lot of people on your list who come from somewhere else,” Milei responded to Bullrich, accusing her of whitewashing a past linked to the Montoneros guerrilla group in the 1970s.

Although he recognizes it its passage through the Peronist Youththat Montoneros claimed, Bullrich denies belonging to this armed organization and says he has expressed self-criticism about the use of violence in politics.

Despite the ideological differences between the two, he often compares his attitude to that of Mujica, who belonged to the Uruguayan Tupamaros guerrilla.

In the campaign, Bullrich has said that “the goal is to end Kirchnerism,” the Peronist faction born of former presidents Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, the country’s current vice president.

However, he would need Kirchnerist votes if he were to go to the second round and have Milei in front of him.

In the debates for the Argentine presidency, there were more personal attacks than concrete proposals, including the participation of the two candidates relegated in the polls: the governor of Córdoba, Juan Schiaretti, and the left-wing Myriam Bregman.

But as it has been forty years since the restoration of democracy in Argentina, D’Adamo says the current campaign also reflects something positive: “that we solve things by voting and we’re not going to go around killing ourselves.”

“The idea that democracy is the system through which we choose the path we want to follow is established,” reflects the analyst.

But, he adds, “the idea that democracy is the system by which we effectively solve our problems is not.” (JO)