2023-10-23 09:28:05
Argentina offered a new surprise, just a few weeks following the PASO. It will take some time to unravel the reasons that led to the Peronism led by Sergio Massa will improve by regarding ten points its August election to jump from third place to first, and compete in a second round with the until yesterday exclusive protagonist of the political scene, Javier Miley. The driving force behind Massa’s victory yesterday was the election in the province of Buenos Aires, where Peronism doubled its main competitor in votes and led to Axel Kicillof to re-election with almost 45% of the votes. In that universe, Unión por la Patria also climbed ten points compared to the primaries and obtained more than half of the votes of Fernando Espinoza’s La Matanza. In Lomas de Zamora, the district of the Insaurralde scandal, Federico Otermin – the dolphin of the former Chief of Staff – won 50% of the votes. Otermin is, in addition to Insaurralde’s right-hand man, the president of the Buenos Aires Chamber of Deputies, the scene of another contemporary scandal, that of the credit cards. Chocolate Rigau.
The recovery of Peronism spread to other geographies. Massa managed to win in at least eight provinces in which Milei had won: La Rioja, Tucumán, Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, La Pampa and Río Negro.
Massa’s performance, however, set fire to all the books. It is implausible that the candidate of a government that has accumulated inflation of 140% in the last twelve months and 40% poverty, has any expectations of achieving the presidency. Less if the candidate is the Minister of Economy, as is the case.
Days ago, the former Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica, spoke of a “mythological animal” in Argentina called Peronism. That animal seems to have woken up. But the reasons for Massa’s recovery I might find other reasons.
One of them is the formidable economical ad package to which the minister surrendered since August 13. It was a succession of initiatives that sought to alleviate the impact generated by the devaluation ordered the Monday following the PASO. It reached all sectors, with improvements for retirees, plan beneficiaries, the lower and middle classes with the refund of VAT and the virtual disappearance of the income tax. A rain of pesos.
But a more intangible reason is hidden in the vote for Massa: the decision of put a limit on Javier Milei’s until now uncontrollable emergency. The fear of what Milei represents seems to have overcome in this instance the fatigue that crosses all sectors with the lack of responses to society’s demands.
Massa’s challenge will now be to be able to bring together a robust opposition force to Milei. Jacques Chirac achieved it in the 2002 runoff once morest the leader of the far-right National Front Jean Marie Le Pen. Chirac jumped from just under 20% to over 82%. It remains a challenge for Massa: although Milei stagnated in his 30% of the PASO, there is a vote on the right margin of Together for Change that will probably turn towards his candidacy. It is that faithful vote to Mauricio Macri.
It remains to be seen what determination Macri himself will make, whom many voices in the space have been holding responsible for the decline of Juntos. The responsibility extends to this electoral failure.
One of the phenomena that we will see from now on will be no longer the fragmentation of the JxC electorate, but that of JxC itself. Together they are undoubtedly the force that has paid for the upheaval of the political scene that produced Milei’s emergence. It is a study phenomenon. A year ago, her candidates tried on the presidential sash.
. A new cleavage, different from the Peronism-non-Peronism polarization that dominated politics in Argentina. We have already seen the excesses to which the minister reached in fiscal matters and the campaign of fear that his strategists deployed to stop the momentum of a candidate whom he helped to establish himself, as so many voices of the ruling party were heard recognizing following the PASO. It seems that the time has come to go for Frankenstein.
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