This Sunday’s elections in Argentina have left an open ending in which the Peronist Sergio Massa will face the ultra Javier Milei in a second round on November 19. But the political landscape has already changed forever: the extreme right, which until this Sunday had only three deputies in the entire Argentine Congress, has become the third force in both deputies and senators. La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, has won 35 new seats in the lower house, and has expanded its bloc to 38 of the 257 deputies. In the upper house, where until now they did not occupy any seats, the ultras have won eight of the 72 seats. No matter who governs starting next December 10, neither Massa nor Milei will be able to have control of Congress.
The emergence of the far right threatens to further strain the lack of consensus in the Argentine Congress, where no party had a majority and the game between Peronism and its opposition had become one of sabotaging each other’s sessions so that they did not achieve a quorum. or in negotiating with minority forces to achieve a simple majority in very specific projects. In recent months, the Peronist Government had managed to pass a law so that workers stop paying income taxes and the opposition reformed the national rental law to lower contract periods and prohibit dollar advertisements that have become common. due to inflation, at 140% year-on-year. Both managed to approve these projects with the vote of minority forces, such as conservative Peronism or regionalist parties, but starting next year they will have to convince themselves to move forward with their projects.
Peronism will retain the first minority in both chambers, but will need to negotiate with the opposition to pass any bill from the lower house to senators. Argentina renews part of Congress in legislative elections every two years. In this election it was time to renew half of the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate, that is, to distribute 130 seats for deputies and 24 for senators. According to the provisional count, Peronism will retain 108 of the 257 seats of deputies, leaving it 21 votes short of a quorum. In the Senate, the ruling party has managed to add two seats and will have 34 of the 72 seats, being three away from the majority. The alliance most punished has been that of Together for Change. The traditional right has lost 25 deputies (its bloc will remain with 93 votes) and nine senators (it retains 24).
Javier Milei became a deputy in the 2021 midterm elections. He was the most popular talk show host on television, captivating audiences by shouting against state spending and winning five seats in an alliance with other forces that brought together conservatives in social and political politics. libertarians in economics. Milei already wanted to be president, but few took him seriously: he did not present any bill, he decided to raffle off his salary as a denunciation of “the privileges of politicians,” and his block was reduced to three people after internal fights: he, his current candidate for vice president Victoria Villarruel, a conservative lawyer who vindicates the military of the dictatorship, and the social worker Carolina Píparo, who has just failed as a candidate for governor of the province of Buenos Aires, the most populated district in Argentina.
Milei entered Congress practically alone in 2021. Now he will be accompanied by a most diverse troop. Among his congressmen will be lawyers, economists, children of repressors of the military dictatorship, evangelical pastors, influencers from social networks and even to her stylist. Highlights, for example, are the economist Diana Mondino, risk analyst and professor of Finance at the Center for Macroeconomic Studies of Argentina (CEMA), first representative for the city of Buenos Aires, the evangelical pastor and anti-abortion lawyer Nadia Márquez, from the province of Neuquén, or Ricardo Bussi, son of the military governor who controlled his province, Tucumán, during the dictatorship, and who became Milei’s great ally outside of Buenos Aires.
Some of the new ultra deputies have already started to cause scandals. Days before the elections, Lilia Lemoine, Milei’s personal stylist, anticipated in an interview that her first legislative project will offer men the possibility of renouncing paternity if the woman “punctured” the condom to “deceive” them. “It doesn’t seem fair to me that a man has to take financial responsibility for a child until the age of 18 when he didn’t want to have it,” said Lemoine, which outraged the rest of the political circle. She wasn’t the only one. In another interview, the first candidate for the province of Buenos Aires, Alberto Bertie Benegas Lynch, son of Milei’s “ideological reference,” said that “the issue of the environment” was resolved “by assigning property rights.” He spoke of “granting property rights to the sea.” According to his reasoning, chickens and cows do not become extinct because they have owners, contrary to what happens with “whales, elephants and others.” Both Lemoine and Benegas Lynch have won a seat this Sunday and will have an open platform in Congress from next year.
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