10/22/2023 – 5:17
“Chameleon” Minister of Economy who represents Peronism, “Argentine Bolsonaro” who wants to dollarize the economy and former hard-line Macrista minister in public security try to win the Casa Rosada. Argentina’s voters go to the polls this Sunday (22/10) for the first round of the presidential elections in an election marked by yet another economic crisis. The current president, Alberto Fernández, is not running for re-election.
Five candidates are in the running for Casa Rosada, the seat of the Argentine Executive: Sergio Massa (centrist Peronist allied with Kirchnerism), Javier Milei (populist ultraliberal), Patricia Bullrich (conservative), Juan Schiaretti (anti-Kirchnerist Peronist) and Myriam Bregman (left).
They were defined in the August primaries, a peculiarity of the Argentine electoral system, in which voters are called in advance to choose which candidates will lead the party’s tickets. The primaries serve as a “funnel” to define suitable candidates, blocking “runts” and resolving internal disputes within the parties.
Of the five candidates, only three proved to be competitive in the polls. Are they:
Sergio Massa: the Peronist chameleon
Massa is Peronism’s main candidate in this election, being a more central figure in the movement. Started by Juan Domingo Perón in the 1940s, Peronism has been one of the main political movements or forms of political organization in the country for decades, and has been described as a “Frankenstein” for encompassing extremely different currents, encompassing both leftists and neoliberals.
Massa’s own political career, aged 51, is as full of twists and turns as Peronism. Initially, this son of Italian immigrants was affiliated with conservative Peronist political groups during the Carlos Menem era (1989-1999). Afterwards, he joined the group of centrist Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003) and finally the Kirchner couple (2003-2015), two populists further to the left of Peronism.
Former mayor of Tigre, in greater Buenos Aires, Massa became Cristina’s chief of staff. However, he later broke with the policy in the early 2010s, publicly denouncing it and forming a rival political group. In 2015, he ran for President with Mauricio Macri and a candidate supported by Cristina as opponents. He finished third in the dispute. As a deputy, he presided over the Argentine Chamber between 2019 and 2022.
In 2019, he sealed a reconciliation with Kirchnerism. But, despite being the candidate of the Kirchnerist left-wing current in the 2023 election, Massa remains an outsider in this nest. In 2022, with the economy heading towards the abyss, then deputy Massa was called by current president Alberto Fernández to take over the Economy portfolio, replacing Silvina Batakis, who was more directly linked to Cristina Kirchner. Fernández also merged two other ministries, whose areas also came to be headed by Massa.
With Fernández giving up running for re-election, Massa launched himself as a pre-candidate for President in the primaries of União Pela Pátria, the main group of Peronists in Argentina. He secured his candidacy by defeating Juan Grabois, from the Peronist left.
In recent weeks, Massa, despite having his image associated with the unpopular Fernández, has reacted in electoral polls, even appearing in first place in some surveys. However, the current bad economic situation weighs against him. The minister has argued that this is a time of transition, and that recently adopted measures will still bear fruit. “The worst is over, the best is yet to come,” he said this week.
Javier Milei: “Argentine Bolsonaro” and “anarcho-capitalist”
The pre-candidate with the most votes in the primaries, Milei, from the personalist party A Liberdade Avança, founded by himself, is an economist with little political experience, who uses an anti-system speech and is a supporter of conspiracy theories.
Aged 52, he was regularly compared during the campaign to Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, ultra-right politicians who turned the political world upside down in their countries.
Milei actually has points in common with Trump and Bolsonaro. Since emerging on the political scene, he has stood out for using aggressive and provocative rhetoric against the political class and especially the left, trying to present himself as an outsider. His rise in the polls has caused concern in neighboring countries such as Brazil, and is due in part to Argentina’s younger electorate, who have been attracted to his anti-system agenda and who are fed up with decades of mismanagement. His campaign appearances were marked by theatrical gestures, such as wielding a chainsaw and chanting insults against opponents. In the August primaries, he was the candidate with the most votes.
Milei defends the possession of firearms, is against abortion and sexual education in schools and considers climate change “a hoax”. He also associated with apologists for the country’s last dictatorship. His running mate is Victoria Villarruel, who has a history of questioning the bloody crimes committed by the military. More recently, like Trump and Bolsonaro, he also began to denounce without evidence that the election runs the risk of being “rigged”.
But Milei is exotic even by the standards of the global ultra-right. A biographer pointed out that Milei takes political “advice” from the spirit of one of her deceased dogs, through a medium.
He has also argued that Argentines should be allowed to sell their organs and wants the Central Bank of Argentina and several ministries to be abolished. After the primaries, he called the idea of “Social Justice” an “aberration.”
His main proposal is to adopt an aggressive dollarization regime, effectively extinguishing the Argentine peso and adopting the American currency in the country. And leaving the State tiny. Personally, he defines himself as “libertarian” and “anarcho-capitalist”.
But Milei’s self-proclaimed libertarianism is seen by critics as a mere cover to hide his far-right nature.
Even so, during the campaign, Milei became the main recipient of protest or opposition votes against the current government. Much of the political debate in Argentina has also been guided in recent times by Milei’s radical ideas, leaving little space for proposals from other candidates.
Patricia Bullrich: hardline conservative on security
Receiving less prominence than Massa and Milei in the international coverage of the Argentine election is Patricia Bullrich, 67 years old. She is a candidate for the Together for Change coalition, Mauricio Macri’s political alliance, although she is more to the right than the former president.
Bullrich initially seemed destined to be one of the main beneficiaries of popular dissatisfaction against the Fernández government. But the rise of ultra-rightist Milei ended up stagnating his campaign. The bad economic figures under the liberal presidency of Macri (2015-2019), an ally of hers and for whom she served as Minister of Security, also weigh against her.
Bullrich has as one of his main platforms the repression of crime in Argentina. Despite being considered more moderate than Milei, she also resorted to populist formulas during the dispute. One of her campaign pieces promised the construction of a new super prison for corrupt people in the country that would be named “Dr. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Penal Unit”.
These proposals contrast with part of Bullrich’s past, whose political career, like Massa’s, is marked by twists and turns. Born into a wealthy family, Bullrich was initially a member of the far-left Peronist youth and came to defend armed struggle in the 1970s. During the Argentine dictatorship, she went into exile in Brazil and later lived in Spain.
This past was used by Javier Milei in the campaign, who even accused his rival of “terrorism” because Bullrich had participated in guerrilla actions.
In the 1990s, back in Argentina, she became disillusioned with Peronism during the Menem era and began to move closer to conservatism, especially in matters of public security, occupying the Ministry of Security for the first time during the ill-fated Fernando de la government. Rúa (1999-2001), which fell amid disastrous management of the economy.
Among Bullrich’s campaign proposals, in addition to the repression of crime – she promises to involve the Armed Forces in public security and lower the age of criminal responsibility to 14 – is the defense of increasing the official use of the dollar, but without the total dollarization of economy defended by Milei. To combat inflation, she proposes guaranteeing the independence of the Central Bank and promoting State reform to reduce spending.
#Election #Argentina #main #candidates