The Argentines have it difficult this Sunday. For Anna Ayuso, researcher at CIDOB and specialist in Latin America, faced with an increasingly less disruptive Javier Milei after having allied himself with what he himself called the “political caste”, the decisive undecided electorate could lean towards the already known evil , the current Minister of Economy Sergio Massa. The result, however, is up in the air.
Poverty levels in Argentina are above 40% and inflation is around 140%. How did Argentina get into this situation?
Argentina did not fully recover from the corralito of 2001. The current situation has a lot to do with poor management by the governments of recent years. One of the things that Milei says and that has resonated with the population, is that there has been strong interventionism in the economy by the government, which has generated a lot of public debt and an inflationary process that prevents the population from accessing the needs basic. The only way out of this situation would be a very strong adjustment policy, but that would mean cuts in public spending and would put the population in an even more difficult situation.
That is precisely what Milei proposes, reducing public spending to its minimum...
What he says is that an adjustment in public spending would produce growth, which would allow the economy to recover in a short time and, therefore, people to be able to access services for themselves. But that is a statement that is not based on evidence, implementing everything he proposes at once would be a disaster. Now, can he do it? Frankly no, because he will not have enough support in Congress to implement these radical policies. Therefore, I believe that many people who see his proposals as radical will end up voting for him because they think that deep down he will have to govern with the PRO (Patricia Bullrich's traditional right).
What evolution can we expect for Argentina's economic situation after the elections?
We hope it improves because in recent years it had worsened a lot due to the drop in commodity prices, due to Covid, due to the drought... We hope that in the coming years the external front remains calm and Argentina can recover, and also that can renegotiate the debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There can be improvements with better management and especially if public spending is rationalized, because right now the deficit is enormous.
What forecasts do you make for Sunday?
The situation is very even, so it will depend a lot on the people who are undecided. I think it is possible that among the undecided there are more who end up voting for Massa, because in the face of uncertainty it is preferable to play it safe. It's difficult to know, because I think there are many people who will vote resigned. I'm talking to people there and many of them don't want to tell you who they will vote for, because they don't feel comfortable with one or the other. But there is a lot of interest. The debate that took place on Sunday had a very high following.
Who will vote for Massa?
Massa has very much control over the province of Buenos Aires, where the working class votes massively for Peronism. On the other hand, the city of Buenos Aires belongs to the PRO of Patricia Bullrich [who has announced her support for Milei]. Massa also has problems in many provinces, such as Córdoba or Santa Fe, because Peronism has been very centralist. Massa has the popular classes, unionism and the neighborhoods, but also a part of the middle class. And then there are the Peronist elites. Most of the upper class is not Peronist, but there are some elites who have grown up with these years of Peronism and who also vote for Massa. He was not the candidate that excited the bases of Peronism, but there are many interests in maintaining power on the part of sectors very close to this current.
And what are Javier Milei's voters like?
The initial 30% who voted for him in the first round were quite male and young, and economically transversal, not only from the classic right, but also from the middle class, and even working class voters. Now he is seeking the centrist electorate. That is why he is adopting a somewhat calmer, more moderate speech, as in Sunday's debate. Almost all analysts say that the debate was unbalanced and that Massa won, but I think that what Milei was trying to do was show a kinder side of her personality. What works in Milei's favor is that people are very tired, it has been 20 years of a situation that is getting worse year after year, and he is a possibility for change. Milei has made an agreement with Macri, with which he seeks to make him lose fear of his proposals, but that agreement also works against Milei, because deep down he is offering something that has already been proven. I think that may cause some people to say that things won't change that much if you vote for Milei, and that it's better to stay with what you already know than to experiment. Another problem that Milei has is women, his speeches have been very sexist and in the surveys it is clearly seen that he has a more male than female percentage of the vote.
Does the Milei phenomenon mean the end of the wave of victories of the left on the continent, Petro in Colombia, Boric in Chile...?
It is true that here is the limit of this second pink wave. In the October elections in Ecuador, for example, it also stopped, the right came out. Now the economic situation is more difficult than during the first pink wave. But this resurgence of far-right populist movements is an international trend beyond Latin America. For example, it has been seen in the support for Milei from Jair Bolsonaro, but also from Donald Trump and, right here in Spain, from Mariano Rajoy. In Latin America there is a clear worsening of democracy indicators and this is very alarming, because despite the differences in each country, it is not just a concrete and conjunctural situation. One of the most worrying things is the revisionism in political terms of what the military dictatorships were, as Bolsonaro already did and now Milei himself does, who has said that the deaths of the Argentine dictatorship have been exaggerated and that in reality It had not been an organized State policy, but there were only excesses by the police. I mean, it's denying evidence.
