2023-08-12 18:45:38
The Argentines will reveal this Sunday who they prefer at the head of the Government that will begin on December 10. That is the strange role played by Simultaneous and Compulsory Open Primary (PASO). More than a mechanism for selecting party candidacies, its results will be read as a fairly approximate survey of voting intentions for the elections on October 22. Peronism, in power, this time runs at a disadvantage. Its main standard-bearer, Sergio Massais the current Minister of Economy of a country with inflation that exceeds triple digits and a poverty as unprecedented as lacerating, close to 40%. hand in hand Cristina Fernandez de Kirchnerwho with his finger anointed Alberto Fernandez As a candidate for president in 2019, Peronism promised “come back better”. He defeated the right-wing Mauricio Macri but, under the weight of the pandemic, the conditions of a debt of 45,000 million dollars contracted by the previous administration and, furthermore, its own mistakes and quarrels, everything has worsened in four years. The failure of the Fernández family has been thunderous. They don’t talk to each other. They barely assuaged their rancor to bless Masa.
The minister’s ambition has led him to assume the task of convincing the electorate not to lean towards the right, whose candidacy is decided by the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and Patricia Bullrichand much less to the ultra-right Javier Miley. They believe that they will be the repositories of collective frustrations.
“I want to invite you to vote on Sunday… We are not that failed society they talk about. we are not a fucking country“. Massa’s appeal sought, at the last minute, to banish the specter of abstention, which would especially harm the official party. “What is being discussed in the background are two country models,” he said. He admitted the accumulation of pending issues in salary and social matters, hinting that he has the courage that the unpopular Fernández has lacked.
previous tensions
“We are facing a moment in which we have to put white on black, and security policy cannot be subject to political-electoral debate,” he also requested. The eve of the PASO was tinged with violence. In the impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires an 11 year old girl was killed to steal a cell phone when he was going to school, and a doctor at the door of his house. The capital police repressed the users of a train that had canceled its service with rubber bullets and sticks. Organizations defending human rights hold her responsible, in addition to the death of a man who participated in a demonstration in which they ordered not to vote on Sunday. The increase in the price of the dollar, which impacts basic necessities, with astonishing inertia, added another veneer of tension to the hours before the primaries. Such was the anxiety that even the rumor of the suspension of the PASO spread.
The map on the right
“On Sunday there are elections, whatever they say,” said Bullrich, a River Plate version of Isabel Diaz Ayuso. His competition with Rodríguez Larreta was not without its pitfalls. What Larreta and Bullrich, a member of the Peronist guerrilla for half a century, share is a Cerrill anti-Peronism and a desire to materialize a conservative agenda from the zero minute of the new administration. The heavy hand of the police in the city of Buenos Aires and the province of Jujuy, where the protests of the original communities exploded over the attempts to privatize lithium, are observed as advances of the near future. Beyond the incidents, pollsters are inclined to surmise that one of the two candidates from that space will govern Argentina.
But polls are never exact science, especially in a country where a tradition of equivocation has been forged. The polls place Milei as a serious competitor in these STEP. The economist and candidate for La Libertad Avanza, who emerged from a television gathering, is much bolder than Bullrich and Rodríguez Larreta. He wants to privatize everything, eliminate severance pay, raise rates, cut taxes and letting the market regulate one’s life, even allowing the sale of human organs.
Milei’s irruption on the political scene has had a revulsive force that transcends the electoral fact. Her vice-presidential candidate, Victoria Villarruel, unashamedly vindicates the actions of the last military dictatorship (1976-83). It has become ‘natural’ for the followers of La Libertad Avanza to break the minimum social consensus regarding what happened in the past. Last Thursday, three commemorative plates of disappeared students were ruined, with graffiti that described them as terrorists. Ramiro Marra, candidate for mayor of the capital, proposed eliminate sex education in schools and that parents of children subscribe to Porn Hub. The electoral ban on Friday did not prevent Milei from receiving the support of Jair Bolsonaro. “Hello, dear Javier”, the former president greeted him, disqualified from holding office until 2030, through a video. “We have many things in common. We defend the family, private property, the free market, freedom of expression, the legitimate right to defense.”
The attentive markets
The markets will be very attentive to the verdict of the polls. Some analysts argue that a good role for Massa would be received negatively. The minister had to juggle for the PASO to develop without a financial earthquake. Doha has lent Argentina 775 million dollars with which it has paid the maturity of a debt. Massa will return that money in November when the IMF grants an agreed disbursement of 7,500 million dollars. If Massa suffers a beating this Sunday, it will be very difficult to continue as minister and the country could enter a dangerous transition until October.
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