Far behind in the past was the slogan that justified the excesses of Peronism with that “they steal but they do”, even with subvariants such as that of Luis Barrionuevo and his famous “we must stop stealing for years.” Today, the new headline phrase of Javier Milei’s shameful voters – those who support La Libertad Avanza although with reservations – could be “they steal but they lower inflation.” Because that is the asset that made a social majority continue to support the President in October, contrary to what all previous forecasts indicated: prices under control are the great flag that libertarians have to show today.
But let’s get to the “roban” part. Before this year’s elections, a string of corruption scandals made it clear that Milei and his inner circle were not so different from the “caste” they came to fight. First, in February, the $Libra crypto scam occurred that put the Government on the defensive for too long. Then, in August, the case of the Diego Spagnuolo audios broke out in which the former director of the National Disability Agency (Andis) spoke of an illegal collection mechanism between companies in the pharmaceutical sector with alleged bribes of 3 percent that would go directly into the hands of sister Karina Milei, via her second, “Lule” Menem.
In the middle, another scandal spoke of a 4,000 million peso contract that Banco Nación had awarded to a security firm of the Menem cousins, Tech Security. And at the end, as icing on the cake, the mistake of José Luis Espert and the money that the alleged drug trafficker “Fred” Machado had given him for his 2019 presidential campaign was revealed, a bomb that forced the bald economist to be removed from the libertarian ticket of the Province that until then he led.
The polls predicted a resounding defeat of the ruling party in Buenos Aires and a close finish at the national level, precisely because of the “roban”. But they all made a big mistake: they failed to understand and measure the second term of the equation, that of inflation under control that led to an unexpected electoral prize.
Was there a shameful vote for Milei and his economic plan due to the bad press that not only corruption, but also the adjustment has on the most vulnerable sectors such as retirees, the disabled and public education? If there was, it is not a very different phenomenon from the re-election of Carlos Menem in 1995, when, in the midst of the recession and the “Tequila effect”, citizens decided to give him a second chance. That was baptized by the critical media as a “quota vote,” because the Argentines who during the Convertibility had gone into debt with their credit cards feared that a defeat for the Riojan could once again trigger tamed inflation and harm them. And what could we call today? I propose “gondola vote.”
