Argentina’s General Election: It’s Going to Take Longer Than Expected
I’ve just returned to Argentina on what I think is my eleventh visit.
The country is going through a big financial crisis with inflation at 130-plus% and has just voted in a general election which many expected to be won by ultra-right-wing outsider, Javier Milei. On the night, October 22nd, however, he came second at 30% of the vote to the Peronist government’s candidate, Sergio Massa who won with 37%, while the official opposition’s frontrunner, Patricia Bullrich, came third. But with such a narrow lead, a second election, or ballotage, between the two main contenders has to take place in November. Milei failed to achieve the landslide many expected, but he is by no means beaten - and many followers of the centre-right PRO party, led by Bullrich, will now have to choose between Milei and Massa.
Milei is a self-styled “anarcho-economist”, whose clownish Beatle-esque haircut reminds many people of Boris Johnson and whose antics include posing with a chainsaw to indicate what he intends to do to Argentinian politics. If that sounds like fun, his running mate, Victoria Villarruel certainly isn’t: she is an apologist for the military dictatorship that ruled the country forty years ago, and she and Milei have both downwardly (and drastically) revised the number of people who disappeared, which human rights organisations have long agreed was around 30,000.
But on my arrival at Buenos Aires’s main airport just a few days ago, it wasn’t hard to find out why Milei has made such an impression, especially on people who are too young to remember the dictatorship. Chatting to my taxi driver, a friendly young man with a neat haircut and a likeable personality, I heard why he was intending to vote for Milei — a man who wants to dollarize the economy, legalise the sale of human organs so that if you’re poor you can (theoretically) sell a kidney to make some money, and to legalise gun ownership. Why did this 27-year-old trust him?
What you don’t understand, he told me, is how corrupt the political establishment is in this country. Money that should have gone to the country simply disappears – nobody knows where. Into the pockets of the politicians, probably, he thought. As a result, he had decided that you might as well give the outsider a chance. And if it doesn’t work, my taxi driver was thinking of leaving the country.
In the town of Bariloche, in the country’s south, where my wife Alicia lives, we went last Sunday morning to the local polling station, a primary school, where she voted. There was a big turn-out: a long queue of cars, and inside, queues of people, and a few mild-mannered soldiers to make sure there was no trouble. Before we left, Alicia was unsurprised to find out that one of her neighbours, Emanuel, had voted for Milei, for a several reasons. First, he thought, Argentina shouldn’t be paying for the healthcare of immigrants from Bolivia or Chile. Second, he wanted to get rid of “noquis” – people who work for the state without doing any work. Third, he wanted to get rid of state-funded schools and hospitals and replace them with private ones. But that would cause chaos, Alicia pointed out. Well, thought Emanuel, Milei wouldn’t be able to do all the bad things he wanted to do anyway, because the opposition wouldn’t let him. So, why vote for him at all? “We just need a change,” was the reply. The rest of Emanuel’s family voted for the government. One wonders how they all get along. During the next four weeks, we may find out.