2023-10-23 21:50:21
With more than 30 years of political career, the charismatic Sergio Massa achieved his dream opportunity this Sunday to run for the Argentine Presidency, from the position of Minister of Economy and with 140% annual inflation.
On November 19, Massa, the most voted in the first round of the elections with 36.54% of the votes, will face the anti-system libertarian Javier Milei, who was the favorite in the polls, but was left behind with just over 30, 06%, according to the scrutiny of 96.31% of the tables.
This is the second time that Massa has sought the Presidency, after a defeat in 2015. Massa, who is today the main figure in Argentina’s center-left Peronist government, chose to remain in the position of minister with the idea that “the campaign is management.”
He took office in the middle of the storm, after the abrupt resignations of his predecessors Silvina Batakis and Martín Guzmán, and was then praised by his colleagues. “Sergio took office three days before we left by helicopter,” declared pro-government leader Jorge Ferraresi, alluding to the abrupt departure of Fernando de la Rúa in 2001, during Argentina’s worst crisis.
???? I already voted with great joy!
Today is a decisive day for Argentina and its families.
I came to vote with Male and Toto. And I am very proud of my daughter Mili who is a prosecutor.
In 4 minutes, in the dark room, we decide the future of the next four years.
Argentina… pic.twitter.com/oEVBCgEwkM
— Sergio Massa (@SergioMassa)
October 22, 2023
Who is Sergio Massa?
51 years old and a dialogueist, Massa has made agreements with businessmen, unions and with the International Monetary Fund. But he could not control inflation, the main concern of Argentines.
A lawyer by profession, he has the ability to show difficulties as achievements, at least among his followers.
“Even if he doesn’t have a plan, he constantly improvises and his promises are not kept, he always conveys the idea that he is in control of the situation and that he will find a way out,” said Diego Genoud, Sergio’s unauthorized biographer. Massa.
A skill that his rivals criticize. “He is a dangerous guy precisely because of his ability to excite people. He is capable of making a speech with a fluency and discursive effectiveness that one believes him, even though he goes completely contrary to the facts. One tends to believe Massa,” said opposition deputy Fernando Iglesias.
Massa “is only interested in the accumulation of power,” he said. With a portly appearance, neat hairstyle and always with a photogenic smile, Massa speaks slowly and modulates as if he were in a Ted Talk.
However, on more than one occasion he described himself as “passionate,” and pointed to the Italian heritage that his immigrant parents passed on to him.
Read here: Petro signed the extradition of a Colombian accused of robbing Maradona’s relatives in Argentina
“I am super passionate, for better or worse,” he explained in an interview, in which he also revealed that he had strong fights with several of his relatives, almost coming to blows with his uncle and his father-in-law.
Then he assured that he no longer handles the same level of intensity that he had in his youth: “The blows shape you,” he said.
Political family
Massa was born and raised on the outskirts of the province of Buenos Aires and got his start in the liberal party UCEDÉ in the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s he turned his militancy towards Buenos Aires Peronism with the help of political leaders Cristina Camaño and Marcela Durrieu, his mother-in-law.
Continue reading: “This is what Hitler said”: Petro attacked Milei, the favorite to win the presidency of Argentina
Durrieu introduced him to his daughter, Malena Galmarini, whom he married and had two children. “She hooked them, she must have liked him as Malena’s boyfriend,” recalled Fernando Galmarini, Massa’s father-in-law and former Peronist leader.
Malena, president of the state water company, serves as his promoter and defender in the political arena, whether to denounce campaigns against her husband in the press or to publish photos of him sleeping with the dog.
You can read: Tension in Argentina: hundreds of lootings “looking for food” remember the 2001 crisis
His leap into national politics
In his political career, Massa has turned friendships into enmities and vice versa, several times. He made the leap to national politics in 2013 with his Frente Renovador, a space within Peronism that presented itself as an alternative to the government of Cristina Kirchner (2007-15), of whom he had been chief of staff and who today supports him again.
In 2015 he was a candidate for the Presidency, but was left out in the first round of the elections that the right-wing Mauricio Macri finally won.
Before creating the Frente Renovador, between 2007 and 2008, and then between 2011 and 2015, he was mayor of the city of Tigre (2009-2015), on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, for the alliance of then-president Kirchner. However, a few years later he distanced himself from her and even maintained that “Cristina is the past” or that “she should be in prison.” In 2019 he allied himself again with the former president, elected vice president that year.
“It is difficult to find coherence in Massa. (But) he has the ability to always be well placed and coveted in the power market,” he told AFP Genoud Agency.
Read more: Shock for a promising soccer child who died after being run over by his own father in Argentina
“I will not fail you”
This was what Massa claimed in his first speech after the results of this October 22, to ask for support for the second round.
“I want to call on you to have the ability to put an end to the idea of the destruction of the other, to the idea of the friend/enemy. If there is one thing that has become clear in this election, it is that the crack has died and a new stage is beginning,” he stated.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! ????????❤️
Thanks to the more than 25 million Argentines who went to vote, our democracy came out stronger.
I am going to call for a government of national unity with the best and regardless of their political strength.
On November 19 we have to define if… pic.twitter.com/NHGT40Bxo3
— Sergio Massa (@SergioMassa)
October 23, 2023
The choice is between “a country that embraces us all or a country of every man for himself,” he added.
AFP analysts point out that Massa, despite the poor performance of the economy, showed restraint throughout the campaign and an open attitude, with constant calls for national unity.
“He was perceived as the most capable of presiding over the country in a situation of chaos like the one it is experiencing,” said political analyst and consultant Raúl Timerman.
Thus, Massa pivoted the campaign in Argentina and, after the first round, consolidated himself as the favorite to win the second round of the elections that will be voted on next November 19. The winner of these elections must take office on December 10 for four years.
#Sergio #Massa #Minister #Economy #disastrous #inflation #surpassed #favorite #Milei #Argentine #presidential #election