Sunday was a splendid day for the country’s canine population; the winner of the great PASO survey did not hesitate to dedicate the historic triumph to his “four-legged children”. Si Javier Miley becomes president, then, he could emulate a Japanese shogun, Tsunayoshi, who in 1687 ordered his subjects to treat the relatives of the children of the mortal enemy of “the caste” with due respect, always calling them “lord dog” or “lady dog”, as the case may be.
Will what happened to those who only have two legs be equally splendid? We will see. The fact that it is perfectly feasible that, before the end of the year, a character with attitudes as atypical as those of the leader of Freedom Advances, a party that is largely one-man, is in charge of a country that is in danger of suffering a socio-economic catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions, is in itself alarming. It is one thing to be fed up with the performance of an inept elite that over the years has done nothing but accumulate failures; it would be quite another to replace it with a makeshift group headed by a rabid eccentric who has become accustomed to receiving messages from the afterlife.
Days before the PASO, there was a lot of speculation about the eventual incidence in the vote of the Murder in Lanús of little Morena Domínguez for a couple of motochorros who wanted to steal a cheap cell phone to sell it and buy drugs; he was supposed to help Milei and Patricia Bullrich who insisted that Argentina needed more drastic changes than those suggested by other politicians. While it is possible that, by drawing attention to the threat posed to society by the proliferation of brutal lumpens, the suburban killings on the eve of the primary elections affected the results, it would clearly be wrong to attribute them to anything else. that the unexpected appearance of some “black swans”since equally gruesome episodes have been routine for a long time.
Be that as it may, last Sunday the national political class suffered a humiliating defeat that left almost all its members stunned. It was a peaceful social outburst that took her by surprise and could be followed by even bigger clashes. Although some had felt that in the PASO Milei could garner more votes than any other candidate, nobody believed that by itself it would surpass all those achieved by Together for Change, whose leaders hoped to score a comfortable victory but that they had to settle for a result that was decidedly mediocre. In order to win the elections in October or November and be in a position to govern a traumatized country with the necessary firmness, the coalition will not only have to fatten up but also strengthen its muscles which, in a year dominated by the internal ones, have been greatly weakened.
Patricia understood that, if it hadn’t been for Milei’s spectacular irruption, the path leading to the Casa Rosada and the Quinta de Olivos would already be clear. It would appear that she does not fully share the optimism of Mauricio Macri, the one who added “what Milei got” to what Patricia achieved to conclude that “Argentina is entering a change of era, leaving behind very harmful ideas.” For this reason, she will have wanted to say that in her opinion the country is coming out of a long night of facile populism that has been dominated by Peronism and by the most doctrinaire wing of radicalism.
Is Milei as liberal as she says? It may be, but it is unlikely that most of his supporters at the polls would care much about his strong ideological preferences. What such voters love is their uninhibited way of expressing the anger, not to mention the rage, they feel when they think about what has been done by a political class that, as Milei says, is in the process of transforming Argentina into a slum. largest on the planet. In his furious way, he gives voice to the widespread feeling that the country has fallen victim to a parasitic and corrupt caste that has ruined it.
Is said caste “socialist”? From Milei’s point of view, trying to differentiate between those political professionals who claim to be left, center or right makes no real sense since deep down they all imagine they are better able to manage the economy than those in the private sector. She understands that while the fondness of so many politicians for nice-sounding abstractions allows them to fool people, in practical terms their efforts have negative consequences because they will always tend to favor their own corporate interests. Here’s one reason it’s been easy for her to include virtually every known leader in the country into the caste she’s vowed to crush.
The same logic can be applied to the Juntos por el Cambio internship in which Horacio Rodriguez Larreta he managed to present himself as the candidate of the caste, as the man who, with his seventy per cent support, intended to rally the bulk of its members, urging them to close ranks behind him to resist both the extremists K and to Milei’s dynamiters. Faithful to national traditions in the matter, Rodríguez Larreta did not hesitate to make the most of his position as head of the government of the City of Buenos Aires to spend a lot of public money on electoral publicity, which, judging by what happened on Sunday, it turned out to be counterproductive.
Still and all, although he did well in the internal opposition, Patricia Bullrich is already facing a dilemma that is not easy. If he tries to reconcile with supporters of the Buenos Aires mayor, he will run the risk of angering those who might be attracted to Milei, but if he tries to seduce those who voted for the libertarian in the PASO, assuring them that deep down he is as “liberal” as the one who more but who, unlike a candidate without structures who is surrounded by opportunists who are only looking for a well-paid job opportunity, would be able to form a genuinely reformist government, could scare “moderates” of Together for Change who, after think about it, they would take Sergio Massa for the lesser evil Even if the permanent political class has been badly hurt by what has just happened, it is in a position to continue defending itself against those determined to dismantle it; it still has the resources that an omnivorous state has accumulated.
Both here and abroad, who are trying to understand what the STEP said they are comparing Milei to Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. In addition to being an outsider, what the iracundo libertarian has in common with the two baddest bad guys in progressive movies is that he has been able to connect emotionally with sectors that have been abandoned to their fate by the local version of the caste and who attribute their problems to his meanness. With everything, although Milei says she believes she is related to the two, there are many differences. Before moving to the White House, Trump, who until then had figured as just another New York Democrat, managed to take over the Republican Party, thereby providing himself with the organized support base that he would need to govern the United States. It is as if Milei had joined Juntos por el Cambio to then establish herself as her presidential candidate by virulently attacking all of her rivals, both internal and external to her. For the rest, to Unlike Bolsonaro, Milei does not appear to have ties to the military or to evangelical churches.although the parishioners of these will tend to be more libertarian than others.
Added together, the silent protest of those who boycotted the dark room, Milei’s votes and, with nuances, Patricia’s, suggest that an overwhelming majority of Argentines is determined to break with the status quo. For Massa, a man who has gotten used to reinventing himself, this will mean that he should adapt to the circumstances thus assumed as soon as possible. While the internship lasted, he tried to give the impression of being loyal to Cristina, but as things stand now , his hypothetical closeness to hard Kirchnerism could only harm him; he will know that, until further notice, he will have to concentrate on his work as Minister of Economy, which will force him to try to ingratiate himself with the markets and with the International Monetary Fund, since the alternative would be to resign himself to being remembered as the main architect of a a disaster comparable to the one carried out almost half a century ago by Celestino Rodrigo.
Like his admirers abroad, among them the Spanish Vox and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Milei’s opponents, starting with the Kirchnerists, place him on the extreme right of the ideological board. In other times, that place was occupied by authoritarians and militarists, but today it is reserved for those convinced that economic liberalism works remarkably better than statism. In any case, despite his flamboyant rhetoric, there are not many reasons to believe that Milei is more authoritarian than his Kirchner enemies who, according to the standards of other times, are fascists, so that the right-wing that such characters attribute to him would be at most a toothless variant of the trend they denounce.
