The debate about insecurity has crept into Argentina’s primary elections, already rare due to the climate of social confrontation as a result of high inequality and an unsustainable economy.
The murder, on Wednesday, of Morena DomÃnguez, an 11-year-old girl from the town of Lanús, in the metropolitan area of ??Buenos Aires, has placed the issue of security at the center of the consultations being held today. The girl was attacked on her way to school by a couple of criminals who hit her hard to steal her backpack. They then fled on a motorcycle. The girl died hours later at the hospital where she was taken.
The death aroused the indignation of the residents of an area already heavily punished by crime and lack of work. But they weren’t the only ones outraged. A day later, the former FARC guerrilla and Argentine photojournalist Facundo Molares died of a pulmonary hemorrhage in the Plaza de l’Obelisk, in the center of Buenos Aires, where he had gone to demonstrate with the social movements. In the videos of the demonstration, the police can be seen holding Molares with his face against the ground while the demonstrators shout at them that he is “turning purple”.
Today, Argentina is a country with poverty that covers 40% of the population, inflation that rises to 116%, where there is a lack of dollars in the face of a currency that continues to lose value. It is not a new disease for the country. Nor are the eternal negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which the country is an eternal debtor. The Government of Alberto Fernández is trying to dominate the situation with the control of capital movements, which makes exports difficult.
Today, Argentines go to primary elections, open and simultaneous in all parties, in which the organizations decide the final candidates for the presidential elections to be held on October 22. It is a unique procedure of Argentine democracy that gives a glimpse of the forces that will face each other in the next elections.
However, given the antecedents of the last electoral appointments, there is the possibility that abstention will be high, due to the growing discredit of politics.
One of the focuses of attention is the Junts pel Canvi coalition, in which Horacio RodrÃguez Larreta, current president of the government of Buenos Aires and a man of the center-right, is competing for the candidacy. Larreta is known for having supported at the time the government of Mauricio Macri, of which he was head of the campaign in the elections that brought him to the presidency. Macri ruled the country between 2015 and 2019, but he could not prevent the return of Peronism to power.
The moderate Larreta starts as the favorite against his opponent, the controversial Patricia Bullrich, a Montonera guerrilla in her youth (left-wing Peronism), exiled during the years of repression and, back in Argentina, reconverted into a supporter of the harder right Minister of Security and Defense during Macri’s mandate, Bullrich’s main letter is the determination to use the hard hand as a formula to stop the complex social situation in which Argentine society is. A Bullrich victory would promise a heated and polarized contest with official Peronism.
On the center-left in the Peronist Union for the Fatherland, today in the Government, they face the current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, who starts with the difficult role of having to defend an economy with impossible numbers and the discredit of the still president, a lackluster Alberto Fernández.
Massa has assumed the candidacy after the decision not to repeat Alberto Fernández, the man that Kirchnerism had elected to continue its politics. Nor has Cristina Fernández, Kirchner’s widow, who governed the country between 2007 and 2015, wanted to try her luck again. Massa competes for the candidacy with Juan Grabois, a forty-year-old man who comes from social movements. Grabois started out as a leader of the “cartonaires” and street vendors. Then he joined Peronism with Cristina Fernández. His chances are few.
Finally, the most controversial candidate is Javier Milei, an economist who analysts place on the extreme right. He denies it and declares himself a libertarian. However, he is a man against abortion and a supporter of a tough hand in the prosecution of crime. Defends the dollarization of the Argentine economy to put an end to high inflation. With a vote intention of 20%, Milei rose to fame from television, where she stands out for her rude language.
