The Argentines have a difficult time on Sunday. For Anna Ayuso, researcher at Cidob and specialist in Latin America, faced with a less and less disruptive Javier Milei after having allied himself with what he himself called the “political caste”, the decisive, undecided electorate could lean towards evil already known, the current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa. The result, however, is still up in the air.
Poverty levels in Argentina are above 40% and inflation hovers around 140%. How did Argentina get to this situation?
Argentina did not fully recover from the 2001 crisis. The current situation has a lot to do with poor management by governments in recent years. One of the things that Milei says and which have struck a chord with the population is that there has been a great 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 most basic needs. The only way out of this situation would be a very strong adjustment policy, but this would mean cuts in public spending and would lead the population to an even more difficult situation.
This is exactly what Milei is proposing, reducing public spending to the bare minimum…
What he says is that an adjustment in public spending would cause growth that would allow the economy to recover in a short time and, therefore, that people would be able to access services. But this is a statement that is not based on evidence, to implement everything he proposes at once would be a disaster. Now, will he be able to do it? Frankly, no, because he will not have enough support in Congress to implement such radical policies. Therefore, I think that many people who see his proposals as radical will end up voting for him, because they think that in the end he will have to govern with the PRO (Patricia Bullrich’s traditional right).
What evolution can we expect in terms of Argentina’s economic situation after the elections?
We hope that it will improve, because in recent years it had gotten much worse due to the drop in prices of raw materials, due to covid, due to the drought… We hope that in the coming years the foreign front will be calm and Argentina will be able to recover, and also that it can renegotiate the debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). There can be improvements with better management and, above all, if public spending is rationalized, because right now the deficit is huge.
What are your predictions for Sunday?
The situation is very even, so it will depend a lot on the people who are undecided. I think that it is possible that among those who are undecided there are more who end up voting Massa, because in the face of uncertainty they prefer to opt for what is certain. It’s hard to know, because I think there are a lot of people who will go to vote resigned. I’m talking to people there and a lot of people don’t want to tell you who they’re going to 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 Massa?
Massa has a lot of control over the province of Buenos Aires, where the working class votes massively for Peronism. Instead, the city of Buenos Aires belongs to the PRO of Patricia Bullrich [who has announced that she supports Milei]. Massa also has problems in many provinces, such as Córdoba and Santa Fe, because Peronism has been very centralist. Massa has the popular classes, unionism and the slums, but it also has 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 Massa. He was not the candidate that excited the bases of Peronism, but there are many interests to retain power on the part of sectors very close to this trend.
And how would you say Javier Milei’s voters are?
The initial 30% who voted for him in the first round were a fairly male and young, and economically cross-cutting staff, not only from the classical right, but also from the middle class, and even working class voters as well. Now he is looking for the central electorate. That is why he adopts a slightly calmer, more moderate speech, as in Sunday’s debate. Almost all analysts say that the debate was unbalanced and that Massa won it, but I think that Milei was trying to show a kinder side of his personality. People are very tired, and that plays in Milei’s favor. 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 aims to make people lose their fear of his proposals, but this agreement also works against Milei, because in the end he offers something that has already been tried before. I think this may lead to some people saying that things won’t change that much if they vote Milei either, and that it’s better to stick with what they already know than experiment. Another problem that Milei has are women, his speeches have been very sexist and in the polls it is clear that he has a higher percentage of male than female votes.
The Milei phenomenon means the end of the wave of victories of the left on the continent, Petro in Colombia, Boric in Chile…?
It is true that this is the limit of this second pink wave. In the October elections in Ecuador, for example, it also slowed down, 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 current that goes far beyond Latin America. For example, it has been seen in the support for Milei by Jair Bolsonaro, but also by Donald Trump and, in Spain itself, by Mariano Rajoy. In Latin America there is a clear worsening of the indicators on democracy, and this is very alarming, because despite the differences in each country, it is not only a specific 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 is doing, who has said that the deaths of the Argentine dictatorship have been exaggerated and that in reality they are not it had been an organized State policy, but there were only police excesses. I mean, it’s denying evidence.
