Ever Alarcón left her home in a depressed area of Buenos Aires a week ago and never returned. He was 20 years old. He was a painter. He went down the street with the intention of buying aspirin for his mother at a nearby pharmacy. His body was found lying on a corner in the Paraná neighborhood. He appeared unrecognizable, riddled with bullet holes in the head next to a wall full of bullet holes and surrounded by 53 empty shell casings. On Friday, federal forces searched the headquarters of the Immediate Operations Tactical Unit of the Buenos Aires Police and seized the weapons of six of its agents. The Prosecutor’s Office believes that a patrol mistook Ever for a small-time drug dealer and shot him.
In Buenos Aires, newspaper readers also had breakfast yesterday, on the eve of the elections, with a report on political corruption in the province. And, in general, the media was lavish in dissecting Argentina’s economic crisis, with four out of every ten inhabitants plunged into poverty, the peso depreciating like never before and inflation skyrocketing to 140%.
Violence, poverty and social fatigue in the face of the corrupt. This is the scenario in which more than 35 million Argentines go to the polls today to elect 130 deputies, 24 senators and regional positions, as well as to designate the candidates with the most possibilities of occupying the presidency of the Government starting in December. . After the resignation of the current president, Alberto Fernández, to continue in this position, the country decides who will be his successor in a two-round election, unless in this first one of the candidates wins sufficiently. Otherwise, the second round will be on November 19. The forecasts indicate that the possibility of the equation being resolved tonight (early morning on Monday in Spain) is remote: victory implies more than 45% of votes or 40% if the distance with the closest rival is more than ten points. The presence of five candidates, three of them with possibilities, seems to render any of those premises useless.
Still, nothing is written. “We are going to win in the first round,” Javier Milei exclaimed on Thursday before thousands of attendees at his end-of-campaign event in the Argentine capital. And, in fact, one of the unknowns that is most talked about is how many votes he will obtain. The radical and eccentric leader of La Libertad Avanza reaches the polls with the theoretical support of at least 30% of voters, thanks to a speech liked by the extreme right, climate change deniers and many of those punished for the misery that, after so many failed formulas, no longer believe in any other solution than in a drastic change in the country’s financial management.
The speech is openly populist. Milei wants to end the political “caste model”, proposes “blowing up the Central Bank” and “dollarizing” the country’s currency – the peso or the “excrement”, in his particular language – despite being aware that the reserves of dollars are insufficient for an operation of this style and that all of them are destined to pay for imports and other transactions abroad. Milei supports the prohibition of abortion and is also the favorite of those nostalgic for the dictatorship. He questions that during the Videla regime there were thousands of deaths and 30,000 missing.
Peronists and conservatives
His emergence on the scene invites us to think about a break in the classic competition between Peronists and conservatives and, also, that the next Parliament will have the widest range of parties of recent legislatures. Such fragmentation will force the next president to constantly negotiate government action. For this reason, the leader of La Libertad Avanza also seeks a definitive victory in the first round and as resounding as possible.
“Do not stay at home, take your children, your parents, your friends, carry hope in your heart because Argentina has a future, but that future only exists if that future is liberal,” he encouraged at the end of his campaign. before more than 15,000 supporters. He believes that, given the enthusiasm that he has aroused in the Argentine youth and the anti-Kirschian and anti-official discourse, today he will be proclaimed president. “First round, the whore who gave birth to him, no matter what it takes we have to win,” he shouted at the rally.
Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy and leader of Unión por la Patria, and Patricia Bullrich, of Together for Change, are his main opponents. The other two candidates, Juan Schiaratti from Hacemos por Nuestro País, and Myriam Bregman, from Frente de Izquierda, do not count in principle to go to a second round. The strongest response to the ultra leader is found in the voice of Patricia Bullrich: “Argentina gets by with reasonable ideas and not with Milei’s extravagant ideas.”
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