Argentina
The meek political outsider will move into the runoff election in November with centrist Finance Minister Sergio Massa
Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 02:34 BST
Eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei failed to win the first round of Argentina’s presidential election, with centrist Finance Minister Sergio Massa unexpectedly defeating his radical challenger.
Supporters of Milei, a soft-spoken political outsider described as an Argentine mashup of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, had hoped he was headed for a sensational overall victory, similar to Bolsonaro’s surprise triumph in Brazil in 2018.
However, with 97% of votes counted on Sunday evening, it was his Peronist rival Massa who won the day with 36.6% of the 26.3 million votes cast. Milei – who has pledged to abolish Argentina’s central bank and avoid its largest trading partners China and Brazil – came in second with 30%. The third main candidate, the conservative former security minister Patricia Bullrich, came third with around 23.8%.
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Massa, 51, and Milei, 53, will now compete in a second round on November 19th. For an overall victory, a candidate would have needed more than 45% of the vote, or more than 40% with a lead of more than 10 points over their nearest rival.
Addressing hundreds of euphoric supporters at his campaign headquarters, Massa delivered a sober speech in which he promised to lead a government of national unity that would usher in “a new phase in Argentina’s political history.” “Know that as president I will not abandon you,” he said, promising “a country without insecurity.” “Argentina is a big family and needs someone to protect them around the clock.”
Milei urged dispirited supporters to celebrate the “historic achievement” of reaching the runoff election just two years after the founding of her party, La Libertad Avanza (Forward to Freedom). “Today is a historic day because two-thirds of Argentines voted for change,” Milei declared, adding: “Either we change or we perish.”
The result leaves Argentina facing another month of great uncertainty, economic turmoil and fake news before a showdown between Massa and Milei, a libertarian economist who only entered the world of politics with his election to Congress in 2021. A Massa victory is not assured given the fact that many of Bullrich’s right-wing voters could migrate to Milei.
Presidential candidate of the Union por la Patria party, Sergio Massa. Photo: Emiliano Lasalvia/AFP/Getty Images
As he cast his vote on Sunday, Milei, who rose to fame as a television pundit prone to gushing about tantric sex, claimed he could lead “the best government in history” if elected.
“We will decide whether we can make Argentina power again or turn into the largest shanty town in the world,” said the tousled-haired populist after pushing through a sea of supporters and journalists to a university polling station.
Marcela Pagano, a television journalist running for a congressional seat for La Libertad Avanza, predicted that angry voters were ready to defeat traditional politicians, who many blame for plunging 40% of citizens into poverty and triple-digit inflation. “to turn off”.
“I think he’s the only one who can lift Argentina up,” Pagano said of Milei, who made the chainsaw one of the main symbols of his campaign – ostensibly to symbolize plans to cut spending and dismantle the political establishment .
Prominent members of South America’s far right flew to Argentina hoping for a Milei triumph that would boost their movement after its top leader, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, lost power to leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in October 2022 last year .
Bolsonaro’s son, a congressman, Eduardo Bolsonaro, traveled to Buenos Aires to hail Milei’s “unstoppable movement” – comments that violate the country’s electoral laws, according to Argentine newspaper Clarín. “The phenomenon that you see in the streets is the same phenomenon that we saw in Brazil in 2018,” claimed Eduardo Bolsonaro, referring to his father’s landslide victory.
South American leftists also appeared in Buenos Aires ahead of the election to support Massa’s initially sluggish campaign, including several Brazilian spin doctors who helped Lula defeat Bolsonaro in last year’s historic election.
A Brazilian-produced social media video released on the eve of Sunday’s election compared Milei to Bolsonaro and urged Argentine voters to defy him. “This man was elected in Brazil and it was a nightmare,” a Spanish-language narrator said of Bolsonaro’s government, in which hundreds of thousands died of Covid and Brazil became an international pariah. “Argentina doesn’t have to go through this.”
A Massa poster campaign warned citizens about Milei’s most radical ideas, which include legalizing the sale of human organs, and claimed he would plunge Argentina into a 2001-like economic collapse. “The Economist says Milei is a risk to Argentine democracy,” said one. “Are you seriously going to vote for him?”
Massa and his allies stepped up their campaign after Milei’s stunning victory in the August primary – a dress rehearsal for the election – by eliminating the income tax for most citizens and trying to distance themselves from former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Those efforts appeared to have borne fruit on Sunday, as voters elected Argentina’s new president and vice president, as well as about half of the 257-member Congress, a third of the Senate and several governors, including those of the city and province of Buenos Aires.
Axel Kicillof, a Massa ally seeking a second term as governor of Buenos Aires province – a key electoral area that is home to nearly 40% of all Argentine voters – also did better than expected, winning by almost 20%. Milei’s candidate came third. “This vote means that there will never be a dictatorship again,” Kicillof told his supporters, referring to Milei’s decision to downplay the number of people killed under Argentina’s military regime during his election campaign.
Milei’s candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires, Ramiro Marra, came a distant third with just 13.9% of the vote.
Dejected Milei supporters gathered outside their leader’s hotel claimed without evidence that the vote was rigged, just as Bolsonaro supporters did after he lost Brazil’s 2022 election.
“It hurts my soul. I expected him to win in the first round. I was surprised,” admitted Ivan González, a 22-year-old Mileísta wearing a Donald Trump hat and a yellow Gadsden flag – an American Revolution-era banner used by the far right in the US and Mileis movement was used.
González blamed Milei’s “scary” opponents for Sunday’s setback, but stressed that he had not given up hope of a second-round win.
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