The right-wing candidate Patricia Bullrich occupies third place in the polls for the presidential elections this Sunday in Argentina, behind the conservative Peronist Sergio Massa. Although at the beginning of this long campaign she appeared first in voting intention, Bullrich began to deflate as her support for the far-right Javier Milei, her great favorite, increased.
At 67 years old, Bullrich is a very popular politician in Argentina, who has been in the limelight for years and who has been the protagonist of countless controversies due to her direct language and the fact that she never shies away from journalists' questions. He is what we could consider a hawk within the broad ideological spectrum of Together for Change, the center-right opposition coalition for which he is running and which brings together, among other parties, the PRO (Republican Proposal) of former liberal president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019). ), to the historic Radical Civic Union (UCR) or to the Civic Coalition.
Argentines have an image of Bullrich that is summarized in his ability to bring order to a country that has been in disorder for decades. In fact, his campaign slogan is “An orderly country.” A tough line against crime or ending the chaos of the everlasting pickets in the streets of Buenos Aires are two of her constant promises, although when she was Minister of Security during the four years of Macri's government she did neither one nor the other. Although pressure against organized crime and drug trafficking increased during her administration, and the police violently repressed some pickets amid great controversy – unlike Kirchner's policy of non-intervention – the underlying problems did not change.
Riding in the official car almost all her life, she had previously been a deputy in several legislatures. With the radical president Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001) she was Minister of Labor (2000-2001) and of Social Security, the latter position where she barely lasted thirteen days in November 2001, in which she had time to drop 13% pensions to retirees, provoking protests in a climate of unprecedented economic crisis that just a month later would lead to the corralito, 39 dead in the streets due to police repression and the resignation of De la Rúa.
However, Bullrich's best-known trait is the 180-degree ideological turn he made in his life, going from being a soldier in the Peronist Youth (JP) and participating in the Peronist guerrilla Montoneros – even though she denies it – to to be on the right of the political spectrum, only surpassed by Milei.
A descendant of one of the sagas of the Argentine oligarchy since the colony, his sister Julieta was the partner of Rodolfo Galimberti, one of the shadiest leaders of Montoneros, who ended up linked to the right. In recent years, several journalistic investigations assured that Bullrich was part of Montoneros – which was nourished mainly by JP militants – and that he participated in at least two armed operations, two kidnappings. According to one of these reports, her nickname was La Piba and she became second lieutenant of the armed organization. In 1975, at the age of 19, she spent six months in prison for carrying out political graffiti. With the arrival of the dictatorship, in 1976, she went underground and the following year she went into exile, residing in Brazil, Mexico and Spain.
“I am concerned about Milei's ideas; They are bad and dangerous,” said Bullrich on Thursday at his final campaign rally in Lomas de Zamora, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, aware that he has to win votes from the far-right to go to the second round. If not, Milei's victory could be a foregone conclusion, taking into account that a good part of the anti-Peronists who vote for Bullrich would support the candidate who defends dollarization and an extreme cut in the welfare state.
In the mandatory primaries on August 13, Together for Change obtained 28% of the votes, adding Bullrich's to his defeated rival, the moderate mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. However, for this Sunday's elections, only one survey reaches that percentage and the majority predicts the superiority of Massa, which reaches 30% in almost all polls, compared to the 35%, at least, that they give to Milei.
