This Sunday’s elections in Argentina have left an open ending, with the Peronist Sergio Massa set to face the ultra Javier Milei in a second round on November 19th. But the political landscape has already changed forever: the far right, which until this Sunday had only three deputies in the entire Argentine Congress, has become the third force among both deputies and senators. La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, won 35 new seats in the lower house and expanded its bloc to 38 of the 257 deputies. In the upper house, where they have not yet occupied any seats, the Ultras have won eight of the 72 seats. No matter who governs from December 10, neither Massa nor Milei will be able to take control of Congress.
Lilia Lemoine, elected as deputy, accompanied by Javier Milei. WITH KIND APPROVAL
The emergence of the extreme right threatens to further exacerbate the lack of consensus in the Argentine Congress, where no party had a majority and the game between Peronism and its opposition had become a game of mutual sabotage of sessions so that they had no reached quorum. or when negotiating with minority forces to achieve a simple majority on very specific projects. In recent months, the Peronist government managed to pass a law banning workers from paying income taxes, and the opposition reformed the national rental law to shorten contract terms and ban dollar advertising, which is at 140 due to inflation % per year has become common. in the year. Both managed to approve these projects with the vote of minority forces such as conservative Peronists or regionalist parties, but from next year they will have to convince themselves to move forward with their projects.
Peronism will retain the first minority in both chambers, but will have to negotiate with the opposition to pass a lower house bill to senators. Argentina renews part of the Congress in legislative elections every two years. In this election it was time to renew half of the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate, i.e. distribute 130 seats for representatives and 24 for senators. According to the preliminary count, Peronism will retain 108 of the 257 seats in parliament, leaving it 21 votes short of the quorum. In the Senate, the ruling party managed to gain two seats and will have 34 of the 72 seats, which puts it three away from the majority. The Together for Change alliance was punished the most. The traditional right has lost 25 representatives (its bloc remains with 93 votes) and nine senators (it retains 24).
Javier Milei became a representative in the 2021 midterm elections. He was the most popular talk show host on television, captivating audiences by protesting against government spending and winning five seats in an alliance with other forces that brought conservatives together on social and political policy. Libertarians in Economics. Milei already wanted to become president, but few took him seriously: he did not submit a bill, he decided to raffle off his salary to denounce “the privileges of politicians”, and his bloc was reduced to three people after internal disputes: he, his current candidate for vice president, Victoria Villarruel, a conservative lawyer who defends the dictatorship’s military, and the social worker Carolina Píparo, who just failed in her bid for governor of Buenos Aires province, the country’s most populous district is Argentina.
Milei entered Congress practically alone in 2021. Now he is accompanied by a diverse group of people. His congressmen include lawyers, economists, children of oppressors of the military dictatorship, evangelical pastors, social media influencers and even his stylist. Highlights include, for example, the economist Diana Mondino, risk analyst and professor of finance at the Center for Macroeconomic Studies of Argentina (CEMA), first representative of the city of Buenos Aires, the Protestant pastor and anti-abortion lawyer Nadia Márquez of the Neuquén province, and Ricardo Bussi, son of the military governor , who controlled his province of Tucumán during the dictatorship and became Milei’s major ally outside Buenos Aires.
Some of the new Ultra MPs have already begun to cause scandals. A few days before the election, Lilia Lemoine, Milei’s personal stylist, predicted in an interview that her first legislative project would allow men to renounce paternity if the woman “pierces” the condom to “deceive” her. “It doesn’t seem fair to me that a man has to take financial responsibility for a child until he turns 18 and then doesn’t want him,” Lemoine said, which outraged the rest of the political circle. She wasn’t the only one. In another interview, the first candidate for the province of Buenos Aires, Alberto Bertie Benegas Lynch, son of the “ideological reference” of Milei, said that “the issue of the environment” was resolved “through the allocation of property rights.” He spoke of “granting property rights to the sea.” According to their argument, chickens and cows do not die out because they have owners, unlike what is the case with “whales, elephants and others.” Both Lemoine and Benegas Lynch won a seat this Sunday and will have an open platform in Congress starting next year.
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