2023-08-14 03:55:39
SEBASTIN FEST
Buenos Aires
Updated Monday, August 14, 2023 – 03:55
The results of the primaries mark an ideological slide towards center-right, liberal and hard-right positions
Javier Milei exercising his right to vote this Sunday. ALEJANDRO PAGNIAFPGrancular Electoral decadent Argentina: violence, crisis and the end of an era
The ruling Peronism suffered a defeat of historic levels today in the primaries for the presidential elections in October in Argentinawho saw win Javier Milei, the eccentric leader of the libertarian hard right.
Counted 62.72 percent of the votes, Milei gets 32.43 percent, surpassing the opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), with 27.60 percent, and Peronism included in the Union for the Homeland brand, with 25.59 percent.
The results of the primaries mark a ideological slide towards centre-right, liberal and hard-right positions which were not precisely the ones that predominated in the democratic era that began in 1983 in Argentina.
The anger of the Argentines with the situation in the country found a triple channel: the punishment of the government, the support for Milei, a new face in politics, and the warning to the opposition coalition Together for Change (JxC) that the Casa Rosada is not necessarily insured as of December 10.
“The surprise is the growth of Milei, demonstrating the anger there is with politics. I warned it a long time ago,” the former president said with a grim gesture to the news signal TN Mauricio Macri, one of the leaders of JxC.
Milei’s success exceeded all expectations. Of great relationship with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, Milei counted in the run-up to the elections with the support of the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and the Chilean rightist If Antonio Kast, among others.
“One of the things that people value most about Milei is that she says what he thinks. That, in a context in which politics is the corporation that generates the least credibility, is a point in its favor,” said political scientist Ana Iparraguirre.
Milei advocated to dollarization of the Argentine economy, dynamite the Central Bank and is opposed to abortion and compulsory public education. He maintains that the “caste” of politicians has been ripping off Argentines for decades and that it is time to sweep their representatives off the stage.
The figures achieved by Milei, a newcomer to politics, are impressive, although in the Argentine electoral system they imply just a first step. The Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory Primaries (PASO) serve as a filter: they rule out those parties that do not reach at least 1.5 percent of the vote and decide, within the parties or coalitions, who is the presidential candidate.
In the case of the hitherto main opposition coalition, JxC, the candidate for the presidency will be Patricia Bullrich, who defeated the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, start as a favourite.
“Horacio already congratulated me, I’m very happy,” said Bullrich, Macri’s former security minister and leader of the coalition’s hard wing, in opposition to the vision of consensus and possibility led by Rodríguez Larreta.
In Peronism, the current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, was confirmed as a candidate by clearly winning the internship over the piquetero leader Juan Grabois. Obtaining the support of barely a quarter of the electorate marks the worst historical result of Peronism, hegemonic in Argentine politics since 1945.
Argentina hold the first round of the presidential elections on October 22, with the possibility of a runoff between the first two on November 19. With annual inflation around 130 percent and a poverty rate close to 42 percent, the third largest economy in Latin America has been stagnant for 12 years, with a GDP per capita that is the same as in 1974.
Participation in these PASO did not reach 70 percent of the electorate in a country where voting is mandatory. History indicates that for the presidential elections that percentage rises between seven and 15 points, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for a presidential race that is far from being defined.
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