A minimum of $10,000 for a candidacy. For the most desirable, up to 100,000. The judiciary is investigating whether the far-right candidate for the Argentine presidency, Javier Milei, sold seats on the electoral lists of his political faction, La Libertad Avanza (LLA). Businesspeople, lawyers and politicians have denounced the ultra-liberal economist’s entourage of demanding large sums of US currency in return for including his name in the election and have been summoned to testify in the ongoing investigation against him. Milei denies all allegations, but the scandal has dealt him a new blow that puts him even further behind the conservative coalition Together for Change (JxC) and the Peronist Union for the Fatherland (UP) candidates in the race. election in October.
“Milei has established a franchisee system where he provides the name and image and blesses a formula, but you have to pay him. The numbers vary widely depending on the charge. “It costs almost $100,000 to run for governor,” economist and liberal lawyer Carlos Maslatón, a former political ally of Milei, said a few days ago.
Maslatón confirmed his charges before prosecutors on Friday. For nearly an hour, he reiterated that within the LLA party, candidates are selected by their ability to contribute.
His statements echo those of businessman Juan Carlos Blumberg, who has accused members of the far-right party of selling candidates for $50,000. “There are people who have paid and used it. The worst part is that these people have turned politics into a business,” Blumberg explained in a radio interview. The businessman is one of the four witnesses called.
Aside from the ethical charges surrounding the alleged sale of candidatures, the court is investigating whether Milei’s entourage committed a crime, such as violating the party funding law. This rule requires that all donations to the political campaign be made through a bank account. Cash financing is illegal.
Milei has made it clear that she will fight back. First, he justified the payments demanded from those who came into his room: “Traditional politicians are funded with government money. In Argentina, politics is financed with taxes, money is diverted from the taxpayer to campaigning, that’s how politics is made.” As a defense mechanism, he has distanced himself from what he sees as “the political caste,” despite having held a deputy seat for nearly two years . “Unlike them, we funded the campaign ourselves. I don’t take mango [un peso] of it,” he said.
This Friday he changed his speech. He expects to take legal action against Blumberg and those repeating what he calls “blatant lies.” Blumberg “intended to run for governor of the province of Buenos Aires because he attended a lecture I gave at the book fair. “The man doesn’t make a correlation between the stupidity of his demand and what he can do, so he starts telling all sorts of lies,” Milei said.
The new stumbling block for the current MP comes after his candidates’ resounding failures in previous provincial elections and harsh criticism from politicians who have distanced themselves from his post. Conservative members of the media, who until weeks ago were still praising him, are beginning to let go of his hand. At the same time, his provocative proposals, ranging from dollarizing Argentina’s economy to repealing the abortion law, a paid public health system or more military deployment, no longer dominate the political agenda.
With three and a half months to go before the presidential election, the polls show a sharp drop in voting intentions for La Libertad Avanza. Its support hovers between 16% and 19%, down almost ten percentage points from when it was at its peak of popularity. Their failure leaves the opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio dreaming of a first-round victory against Peronism, but for now they are at odds with the polls. These give him just over 30% if you add his two candidates Patricia Bullrich and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, closely followed by Peronism with Sergio Massa at the helm.
Meanwhile, Milei goes on tour to neighboring countries, where she is better off than at home. This Friday he held a conference at the Municipal Theater in Las Condes together with Axel Kaiser from the Fundación para el Progreso, which he titled “The Liberal Renaissance”. Rocio Montes. The Argentine pressed charges against Chilean President Gabriel Boric to applause. “They come together among the left, that is, they come together among the impoverished, and as we hope to get rid of the Kirchner plague [en Argentina]I hope you have the luck and height to get rid of this impoverished Boric too. Here they had [Ricardo] lakes, too [Michelle] bachelor Well, now they have this.
Milei’s attacks deserved a response from Chancellor Alberto Van Klaveren. “We ask you to limit your electoral campaign to Argentina and not to extend it to Chile,” the diplomat from La Moneda told him.
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