Argentine politics is in full mutation. Its new structure depends on the result of the second presidential round that will be held on November 19 by the Peronist Sergio Massa and the ultra Javier Milei. However, the cards that each one will have for the final game began to be revealed in this dizzying week, marked by the de facto divorce of the conservative alliance Together for Change (JxC), the big loser in last Sunday’s elections. .
That alliance, which functioned as a successful marriage of convenience for eight years, was undone by the same person who had founded it: former president Mauricio Macri. After flirting with Milei during the campaign, she invited him to dinner at her house just one day after the election. The defeated candidate, Patricia Bullrich, also sat at the table, and both apologized for the mutual insults. For Milei, Bullrich stopped being a “murderous bunch” who planted bombs in kindergartens, Milei’s ideas stopped being “bad and dangerous for Argentina.” “When the country is in danger, everything is allowed,” Bullrich summarized to express her explicit support for the far-right candidate.
The betrayal was sealed with a hug. The one with Milei and Bullrich on a television set; that of their avatars—a lion and a duck—in a virtual world that filled them with likes.
That embrace, agreed in secret and staged in public on Tuesday, dynamited a diverse alliance, formed by the Republican Proposal (Pro)—the party founded by Macri in 2005—, the century-old Radical Civic Union and the ARI Civic Coalition, headed by Elisa Carrió. Hours later, the radicals Gerardo Morales and Martín Lousteau exposed all the rags to the sun and passed bills accumulated for years. Morales accused Macri of being a coward: “he is the main person responsible for the defeat, but he is hiding.” Lousteau went further and asked Macri and Bullrich to leave for having made “a unilateral and unconsulted decision.”
The deepest division for now is between hawks and doves: the hardest wing of JxC has joined in explicit support for Milei, the most moderate wing is committed to remaining neutral. Among the first are Macri, Bullrich and around thirty deputies. Among the seconds, the mayor of Buenos Aires, from the Pro, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and the ten provincial governors of the alliance, who will have to negotiate with the winner of the elections when he takes office as president on December 10.
On Thursday, the shock wave of the hug muddied the waters of Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA). First, veteran trade unionist Luis Barrionuevo abandoned ship, a juggler who went from embracing the ephemeral presidential candidacy of Kirchnerist Wado de Pedro to joining the ranks of Milei and then retiring. Later, the defections of elected representatives began for a space that promised to kick out the political caste until Sunday and on Monday began to negotiate with it. For now there are three out of 40. That same night, Milei was close to collapsing in a television interview in which he was seen exhausted, disoriented and unable to maintain the thread of his speech in the face of the noise caused by a measure of union force.
On the other hand, Massa’s victory in the first round – with 36.7% of the votes compared to Milei’s 30% – united Peronism behind him. Internal struggles are frozen and energies are concentrated in one direction: winning. It seemed like an impossible goal until a few months ago. Massa is Minister of Economy of a country with 140% inflation, with the national currency on the floor, the economy stagnant and without dollars to pay the debt with the International Monetary Fund. On Sunday, two-thirds voted for a change, but on November 19 the options are reduced to two: Massa or Milei. Massa seeks to convince Argentines that he is the lesser evil.
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