It would be a mistake to allow the fascination produced by the movement of the pieces to disguise the structural alterations of the board. Because in Argentine politics what is changing is the board. The triumph of the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, leaves a main phenomenon in the background: the Peronist coalition Unión por la Patria, which he represents, has held one of the worst elections in its history. Massa obtained 9,645,983 votes. A feat if he compares that figure with that of the primaries, when he had obtained 3 million fewer votes. But a very bad election if we refer to the one that the same force obtained in the 2019 elections, when the current president Alberto Fernández triumphed, who had obtained 3.3 million more votes than those obtained by Massa this Sunday.
The key to success, then, lies elsewhere. It is in the fracture of non-Peronist representation. In that field there were more than 14 million votes, which is equivalent to 54% of the election. But distributed in two candidates: that of the far-right Javier Milei, from La Liberad Avanza, who obtained 30% of the votes; and that of Patricia Bullrich, from Together for Change, which earned 24%. Bullrich expresses a coalition that attracts right-wing citizens, identified above all with the leadership of Mauricio Macri, and centers of the center and center-left, who identify with the old radicalism or with the leadership of Elisa Carrió.
This fragmentation of the non-Peronist field expresses an important modification of the playing field. The crisis is in this area. For what is this? A preponderant factor is the very gray outcome of Macri’s management, battered by the deep discomfort that inflation causes when it is combined with a drop in the level of economic activity. Many voters see the 2015-2019 period, that of the Macri Government, as another chapter in a long stagnation. This experience means that for many voters, Together for Change no longer means any change, and is part of an inertia that must be interrupted. This problem, which is the central one, is aggravated for other reasons. One of them is the Kirchnerist eclipse. The confluence of people with very diverse sensibilities under the umbrella of Together for Change was motivated by the fear that Cristina Kirchner, at the height of her reign, back in 2012, would establish a Bolivarian-style dictatorship. With this danger averted by the weakness of Kirchnerism, the reasons for the contract become more blurred.
Milei’s great challenge for the second round that he will fight with Massa on November 19 is to find a flag that reconciles what was united. That is, replace the opposition of Peronism identified as Kirchnerist populism. This is what he began to rehearse in his closing speech at the electoral event. It is the basic plot line: remember the most unpleasant features of the ruling party, especially those associated with its extravagant level of corruption. However, this anti-Kirchnerist campaign may be insufficient. Not only because with great advertising art Massa managed to hide a lot from the Kirchner leadership, starting with Cristina Kirchner who disappeared from the scene. Also because the moral stigmatization of the adversary would not be enough to neutralize the characterization that the Government candidate will dedicate to him.
Massa will launch a campaign modeled on the battle Lula da Silva waged against Jair Bolsonaro. To do this, he has a group of Brazilian advisors posted in Buenos Aires by the president of Brazil himself. At the head of all is the marketing expert Otavio Antunes, an expert in preparing strategies against right-wing applicants. He worked not only for Lula, but also for the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the Bolivian Evo Morales. In all cases the main flag will be democracy versus fascism.
It will be necessary to see if Milei knows how to conjure the attraction that this arrangement of the groups exerts on the Pro voters who do not identify with Macri’s leadership or with the voters of radicalism and also with those of Juan Schiaretti, a dissident Peronist, governor of the province of Córdoba, which with moderate proposals obtained 1,784,000 votes, double what it had collected in the primaries. In other words: it will be necessary to see if the economist Milei manages to issue a democratic and pluralist message that guides him towards the center. It would be a long conceptual journey. Massa has already covered it: he is the leader who, as a center-right Peronist, can speak with greater plasticity to sectors of the moderate middle class, who may fear Milei’s extremism.
The La Libertad Avanza candidate must also attempt another metamorphosis. Until now he appears as a doctrinal leader, who cites theorems and books to justify his proposals. Someone more like a social reformer than the president of a country. Will he learn to refer to concrete proposals? Will it make it possible for society, which in general is suffering the mortifications of an economy that, projected towards the end of the year, will already reach 200% inflation? Or will it facilitate the portrait that Peronism makes of him? That is to say: that of a predatory leader, who in his idolatry of market forces has no inhibitions about plunging the vulnerable into misery. Milei knows there is a problem there. That is why on Sunday he clarified: “I do not come to eliminate rights, but to eliminate privileges.” It will be known soon if he is capable of solving it.
In all these unknowns is a great enigma: whether in Argentina there will be a replacement in the representation of the non-Peronist middle class, from the leadership of the leaders of Together for Change, with Macri in the center, to the leadership of Milei. While that puzzle is being solved, there will be fragmentation. It is the sign of these times in Latin America. This is the great risk: that democracy generates detachment not because of the concentration of power in the hands of a leader, but because of a fragmentation that makes it ineffective.
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