I vote for Milei: rich and poor, young and old fed up with politics

What do a butcher, a bicycle delivery man, a medical student from a wealthy family, and a young man born in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires? The fed up And I support him Javier Miley.

The eccentric far-right economist, who promises to turn Argentina around with dollarization, a strong hand against crime and the end of the privileges of traditional politics, was the most voted with 30% in the primaries that defined the candidates for the October general elections, which outlines him as the favorite to reach the presidency.

Like other disruptive leaders such as Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei counts among his followers millionaires and poor, formal and informal workers, young and old, inhabitants of big cities and remote towns and of different ideological profiles. . But they all agree on one thing: they want drastic political and economic change.

“We Argentines are tired”said Mario Giménez, 44, who from the counter of one of the butcher shops that characterize the traditional Mataderos neighborhood in the capital has witnessed for 20 years the drop in the purchasing power of his clients due to endemic inflation that is estimated which this year will reach 150%.

“Today eating meat is a luxury, but a tremendous luxury”admitted the butcher despite the fact that Argentina used to be one of the countries with the highest consumption of meat per capita in the world. “I don’t get used to it. It’s hard to see an old man and tell him ‘this is not enough for you’”.

Although by tradition the workers in slaughterhouses and butcher shops leaned towards the Peronism that currently governs, Giménez no longer believes in its promises of social justice and voted for Milei, who adheres to a current that has respect for individual freedom as a dogma.

“I stopped doing it (voting for Peronism) because it can’t take it anymore. Education, insecurity, everything is wrong and there are no improvements and they had a lot of time. That disappointed me a lot. It’s a complete cycle.” said the man, father of three children. Of the last 20 years, Peronism ruled 16.

Milei prevailed in 16 of the country’s 24 districts with support that spans all age groups and socioeconomic levels.

His force, La Libertad Avanza, obtained five million more votes than in the 2021 midterm elections in which Milei won a national deputy seat.

Milei will dispute the presidency with the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, for the ruling Peronism, and the former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, of Together for Change, a space that was the government between 2015 and 2019 with the conservative Mauricio Macri as president.

“Although it is true that (Milei’s voters) have different backgrounds and different realities, there is something that crosses them all and it is the crisis, the economic situation,” evaluated Celia Kleiman, sociologist and director of the consulting firm Polldata Market, Social & Political Researcher.

“They were looking for someone who would raise something else and who could also interpret this discomfort, this disappointment with the political class” traditional, said the expert.

He “Lion”, as Milei is nicknamed, devoured part of the electoral base of the ruling Peronism, but also of Together for Change.

A survey by the Observatory of Applied Social Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) carried out the week after the August 13 primaries revealed that 42.6% of the 4,623 surveyed believe that Milei will be the future president. The margin of error was 1.4%.

With social networks as allies and appearances on television programs with a large audience, Milei captured the attention of Argentines, especially the youngest, with her disheveled hair, her criticism of the “political caste” and a plan to dollarize the economy as a solution to all of Argentina’s problems.

“I feel that it is like a different proposal that is going to bring the end of the inflation, since when using the dollar we do not have the same inflation that the peso has. I feel that the weight is already dead”, said Belén Ragusa, 20, who lives with her parents in a spacious apartment in the Caballito neighborhood, which is dominated by wealthy middle-class families.

The young woman, who is studying medicine at the UBA, was also enthusiastic about Milei’s plan to reform one of the most recognized models of free public education in Latin America through a voucher system whereby public funds will not go to educational establishments but to students, a mechanism that, with nuances, was applied in Chile, Sweden and the United States, among other countries.

“I lived firsthand all this, which is the decline of the faculty, the state it is in, how the professors handle themselves as they want, they can be absent without notifying you”, argument. “Although it is very controversial, in part it will bring this improvement with competitiveness (among educational establishments to attract students) and there will be no other option than to improve education.”

Milei’s critics maintain that dollarization is not viable because the South American country does not have enough foreign currency to replace them with pesos in circulation, and they call his proposal to eliminate the Central Bank absurd.

Doubts are also being raised about the viability of many of his reforms – labor, tax and retirement – without a political structure that supports him, since his party does not have governors and will be a minority in Congress.

For the expert Kleiman, the voters of Milei “They have not seen the fine print (of their proposals) for the most part, others have and if they have seen it, they downplay it.”

A few kilometers from Ragusa’s home, a young man born and raised in the narrow corridors that separate the precarious houses of Barrio 31, also voted for Milei.

“He expresses himself in a very loud way. That caught my attention, he seemed to me someone very committed to the country ”, highlighted Fernando Medina, 17, who is in his last year of high school and voted for the first time.

He pointed out that the proposals he likes the most are the “firm hand” against crime and put an end to abuses in the model of assistance to the poor. Milei promised to maintain the aid plans -poverty exceeds 40% of the population-, but without the mediation of social organizations as up to now.

“There are people who never worked, never did anything and they get paid”Medina questioned. “We want there to be opportunities and we don’t have to leave the country to be able to work and have a good life.”

“Intelligent, honesty, good economist, sincerity” These are some of Milei’s virtues that stood out in the study of the Observatory of Applied Social Psychology. In contrast, they were marked as defects “crazy”, “violent” and “psychopath”.

In the analysis of the vote for Milei, the rejection of the gender policies that dominated the public agenda in recent years was also noted.

The far-right candidate promised to eliminate the Ministry for Women in the framework of a State adjustment that seeks to reduce the ministries from 20 to eight. In addition, he will call a plebiscite to repeal the law that decriminalized abortion in 2020.

“They don’t give balls to women even if they have a ministry”said Joel Benítez, 19, part of the large army on bicycles of the home delivery service that offers different mobile applications, an activity that exploded with the pandemic and became a lifeline for thousands of young people.

The delivery man believes in Milei because “He brings different proposals, he does not propose the same as the others. Propose a change. You have to trust.”

for kleiman “He is also enthusiastic about the inclusive language, which he refuses to use, because it is like this weariness encompasses all this progressivism… people are worried because they don’t have enough to eat, they don’t have a job, they can’t go out to the corner of their house because he is the victim of a criminal act.”

Although among Milei’s voters those disappointed with the traditional political leadership prevail, others celebrate it as the expression of a political current that had been invisible in the electoral offer of the last decades.

“There are people who don’t know who they are. Since they saw that it didn’t work with the Kirchnerists or with Together for Change, they went with Milei… They support him because she says ‘we’re going to improve’ and ‘we have to throw them all out’. I have fundamentals”remarked Horacio Finochietti, a 67-year-old industrial engineer who lives in a house in La Horqueta de San Isidro, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the province of Buenos Aires.

The man, who trained in economics and business administration in the mid-1980s under liberal academics who also influenced Milei, said he communes with his “libertarian ideology that defends the individual project of each person, the reduction of the State and the deregulation of the economy… it is the first time that someone with this type of ideas has achieved this amount of votes.”

To win in the first round, a candidate must obtain at least 45% of the vote or 40% and a difference of 10 percentage points over the second. The runoff is set for November 19.

Source: AP