(Buenos Aires) The ultraliberal economist Javier Milei will be the next president of Argentina, after having largely won the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, with 55.95% of the votes against 44.04% for his rival, the Economy Minister Sergio Massa, according to partial official results.
The results showing a lead of more than eleven points for Javier Milei were communicated by the general secretariat of the presidency, with more than 86% of the votes counted.
A few minutes earlier, centrist Sergio Massa, who came first in the first round on October 22, had conceded defeat, announcing to his supporters at his campaign headquarters in Buenos Aires that Milei “is the president that the majority of Argentines have elected for the next four years.
He added that he called Javier Milei “to congratulate him and wish him good luck.”
At the same time, euphoria filled the exterior of Javier Milei’s campaign headquarters, where a few thousand supporters sang and chanted two of the candidate’s favorite slogans: “La caste tiene miedo” (The caste is afraid!) Viva la libertad, carajo! » (Long live freedom, damn it!).
“Let them all go, let not one be left!” “, also intoned the pro-Milei, waving yellow flags bearing the image of the lion – an image cultivated by Milei himself, evoking his hair-mane.
PHOTO MARIANA NEDELCU, REUTERS
The defeated candidate Sergio Massa
Brazilian President Lula wished “good luck and success” to the new Argentine government, in a message on the social network X in which he did not mention Javier Milei. “Argentina is a great country that deserves all our respect. Brazil will always be available to work with our Argentine brothers,” Lula wrote.
The extent of the gap is surprising: pollsters had in recent weeks given a slight advantage to Milei, but many analysts predicted a result that would be decided “down to the vote”, in a tense and undecided election like rarely in the 40 years since the return of democracy.
In the end, the “outsider” who promised to free the “parasitic political caste”, the Peronist and liberal governments succeeding one another for 20 years, overthrew Argentine politics with a small tidal wave, to the point of being flush with it. -bold Argentinians exhausted by an economy on its knees.
Chronic inflation, now at three digits (143% over one year), four out of ten Argentines below the poverty line, pathological debt and a currency that is unraveling paint the landscape of this second round.
Long-term care or shock therapy? For the third largest economy in Latin America, 36 million Argentines were called upon to decide between projects for the future that could not be more antagonistic.
On one side, Massa, accomplished politician, Minister of the Economy for 16 months of a Peronist executive (center left) from which he had distanced himself. And which promised a “government of national unity”, and a gradual economic recovery, preserving the welfare state, crucial in Argentine culture.
Milei “like Scaloni”
Facing him, Javier Milei, an “anarcho-capitalist” economist as he describes himself, a TV polemicist who entered politics two years ago. Defendant against the “parasitic caste”, determined to “cut apart” the “enemy state” and to dollarize the economy, leaving the Argentine peso to die a beautiful death.
In the middle, Argentinians who went “from crisis to crisis, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” summarized Ana Iparraguirre, political scientist at the GBAO Strategies firm.
Exhausted by prices that climb from month to month, even from week to week, when wages drop, including the minimum wage at 146,000 pesos ($400).
“We must vote for the least worst,” resigned Maria Paz Ventura, a 26-year-old doctor. “A lot of people are afraid of (Milei), but the way we are, a change wouldn’t hurt us. You have to bet! “.
Milei, “it’s like Scaloni (the coach of Argentina, world champion, editor’s note): no one believed in him, and in the end he did things well,” enthused Sonia Do Santo after the victory, a 36-year-old teacher.
“We’re going to take hits”
Very moved, Maria Carballo, a 40-year-old architect, said on the contrary, when she slipped in her ballot, she “felt like crying, for fear that Milei would win. His ideas scare me.”
Milei has captured a “bronca” (anger) vote for two years, but his rhetoric, his desire to dry up public spending in Argentina: a country where 51% of Argentines receive social assistance, or his project to “deregulate the market guns,” were also frightening.
Also, the “anti-system” candidate lowered his voice between the two rounds. Fewer appearances, less clear-cut, and a message: “Vote without fear, because fear paralyzes and benefits the status quo.”
The only certainty: whoever wins, there will be “rapid economic decisions that will hurt,” says Ana Iparraguirre.
The country is under pressure from the budgetary rebalancing objectives of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to which Argentina is painfully repaying a colossal loan of 44 billion dollars granted in 2018.
“Whatever happens, we don’t see a bright future. We expect to take blows,” grimaced Mariano Delfino, 36, after voting “without conviction”.