With more than 35 million ballots casted, Argentina voted to elect its future President this early morning (23/10/2023 CET).
What was the outcome? Short answer: Milei lost. Long answer? It’s more complicated.
The background of these 2023 elections is pretty much messy. The outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez (2019-2023), is a Peronist that served in office just for one term, leaving a country in a great state of social and economic crisis. Inflation is skyrocketing, with a 138% grade registered in October. The price of food, basic services and basic goods has raised faster than salaries, reflecting a permanent state of deep social crisis that seems unstoppable since the beginning of the 2000s. Both left and right-wing presidents, one after another, mistakenly approached deep economic problems, failing to offer a proper recovery to the Latin American country. Mauricio Macri (conservative), before Fernandez, secured the intervention of the IMF to fix the economy, with the largest financial recovery in its history (57 billion dollars), which revealed not to be enough. During his presidency, Macri extensively implemented neo-liberal measures to rescue the economy but with scarce results: the population living in poverty reached 32%, service costs raised by a +100%, inflation stuck around 60% with respect to USD, interest rates topped 73%, and multiple ministers of Finance resigned during the four years. The follower, Fernandez, did not prove to be a national savior and, to be fair, the COVID outbreak t
ogether with the Russian-Ukrainian war complicated the task for the leftist President, which lead to the current unstoppable inflation rates, fueled by rapid and wide expansion of money supply.
In this context, the savior came to be our greatest nightmare: Javier Milei. The anti-establishment, aggressive, and populist comedian presented himself as the newest alternative and solution for the current situation. Kinda. The background of Captain AnCap (google this) is pretty much of an already-seen story. Known in the Argentinian talk-shows and an actor (currently), he became famous with an incredible variety of statements that still seem out of touch. Milei has (rightly) been portrayed as the new Donald Trump. Yet another. He is against everyone, wants to wipe out ministries and privatise everything. He denies climate change and wants to liberalize every single institution (also organs’ market). Cutting stuff really does seem his favourite hobby, as he expressed why waving a chainsaw to mimic his intention to cut the public debt. All in all, Milei represents history that repeats itself. Yet another strong figure, excessive in his behaviour, that claims to be the only superhero with the knowledge and solutions to fix it all.
So, did he win the Presidential elections? Actually not. After collecting most popular votes in the Argentinian Primaries (PASO) back in August, the big picture now seems different. He just ended up second (30%) after Sergio Massa (37%) the outgoing Fernandez Minister of Finances, followed by Patricia Bullrich (23%) a center-right Peronist. The expectations did pretty much disappointed the supporters of Milei, but the game is not over yet. On the 19th of November, Massa will face Milei himself in a second round for the office. So, even the show will go on and the campaign will be even more ferocious, the international community “takes a sight of relief” as Berna González Harbour stated in her comment about the elections.
But the root causes of this already-seen circus must be investigated. Why does every time that a deep crisis (especially economic ones) shakes the foundations of a country, not only elite politicians dramatically fail to address the issues, but also bloody crazy superheroes consequently take the stage with great popular support? The answer to Argentina’s dramatic situation is for no reason an easy one, but neither Milei is a valid alternative. Neo-liberal decisions lead to this current inferno and surely more neo-liberal recipes would not heal the wounds that they created.
This time, the Argentinians heard the sirens ringing and acted accordingly, but as said, the game is not over yet. If Sergio Massa becomes the next President, he must take immediate and bold actions to rescue his country, far from the ones taken by Macri, braver than the ones taken by Fernandez, and surely as far as possible from the ones proposed by Milei.
Because hawks like him know how to wait until the time comes.
Milei no es el Rey, but until the very next time.
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