L’Argentina comes to the election date on October 22nd with theEconomy in flames, hoping that Sunday’s vote or the Nov. 19 runoff will produce a leader capable of pulling the country out of the negative spiral in which it finds itself. The panorama is uncertain.
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Elections in Argentina, the scenarios
Traders, productive companies and foreign investors are standing at the window waiting to understand what will happen as the idea takes hold that a new devaluation of the peso is imminent. A repeat of what happened the day after the August primaries, when the national currency left 22% on the table in dismay at the result of “anarcho-capitalist” outsider Libertad Avanza. Javier Mileiwhich jumped to the top of preferences for a seat in Casa Rosada with 29.8%.
The protagonists
They overtook the other two favorites, the conservative Patricia Bullrich (Juntos por el Cambio) with 28% and the progressive Peronist and current economy minister Sergio Massa (Union por la Patria), who stopped at 27.8%. The short-term forecast is characterized by instability. And with an annual inflation rate of 140%, a poverty rate of around 40% and billions of dollars in debt that must be repaid to the International Monetary Fund, Argentina has become a field of conquest for the proselytizing of the new right-wing populism, according to Trump’s long wave. In fact, it is no coincidence that representatives of the far-right Vox party and Bolsonaro’s sovereigntists have traveled from Spain and Brazil to support the Milei anti-system.
“The Man with the Chainsaw”
The man with the chainsaw (he showed up to a rally “armed” with a chainsaw) was cheered by the crowd. “The king of a lost world” who wants to tear apart “the thieves’ caste” and promises a “future” as glittering as the shower of sequins at his last rally. To deal with the country’s economic mess, the leader of Libertad Avanza, who will blow out 53 candles on election day, is aiming for harsh conservatism on social issues and unbridled liberalism, with drastic cuts to public spending and the suppression of more than half of ministries, the dollarization of the economy and the end of the central bank. Mileis, “a leap into the void,” according to many moderate bourgeois observers who favor the conservative Bullrich’s project, focused on removing the current blockages that prevent the purchase of dollars on the official market. The program of the Champion of Juntos por el Cambio is summarized in a 22-point document entitled “An Ordered Country”.
Milei’s manifesto
And from the beginning of the campaign he chose to be supported by the super economist Carlo Melconian. His manifesto envisages the possibility of using both the peso and the US dollar, with gradual reforms and differential modulation of stimulus to “put an end to inflation and restore solvency”. The proposal of the progressive Massa, current Minister of Economy, goes in a completely different direction and envisages energy development with the gas and oil fields of Vaca Muerta and raw materials with lithium.
The Union por la Patria candidate is betting on joining the BRICS countries and supporting China and promises to “cancel the debt to the IMF” in four years. But some observers maliciously claim that with Massa the country could be “turned into Argentina-China.” So much so that Peronist President Alberto Fernandez flew to Beijing a few days before the elections to activate a new $6.5 billion currency swap, combining the three installments of the debt due in October into a single payment to the IMF. An attempt to contain the market and exchange rate instability that seems almost inevitable from Monday, the day after the vote.
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on Il Messaggero