Argentine politics is in complete upheaval. Its new structure depends on the outcome of the second presidential round, which will take place on November 19 between the Peronist Sergio Massa and the ultra Javier Milei. However, in this dizzying week marked by the virtual divorce of the conservative coalition Together for Change (JxC), the big loser of last Sunday’s elections, the cards that everyone will have for the end game began to emerge.
This alliance, which functioned as a successful marriage of convenience for eight years, was dissolved by the same person who founded it: former President Mauricio Macri. After flirting with Milei during the election campaign, he invited him to dinner at his house just one day after the election. The defeated candidate Patricia Bullrich was also sitting at the table and both apologized for insulting each other. For Milei, Bullrich ceased to be a “murderous bunch” who planted bombs in kindergartens, and Milei’s ideas ceased to be “bad and dangerous for Argentina.” “When the country is in danger, anything is allowed,” concluded Bullrich, expressing his explicit support for the right-wing extremist candidate.
The betrayal was sealed with a hug. The one with Milei and Bullrich on a TV; that of her avatars – a lion and a duck – in a virtual world that she filled with likes.
That embrace, agreed in secret and staged publicly on Tuesday, sparked a diverse alliance led by the Republican Proposal (Pro) — the party founded by Macri in 2005 — the century-old Radical Civic Union and the ARI Civic Coalition Elisa Carrio. Hours later, radicals Gerardo Morales and Martín Lousteau exposed all rags to the sun and passed years of accumulated bills. Morales accused Macri of being a coward: “He is the main responsible for the defeat, but he is hiding.” Lousteau went further, asking Macri and Bullrich to leave because they had made “a unilateral and unconsulted decision.”
The deepest division currently lies between hawks and doves: the hardest wing of JxC has joined in explicitly supporting Milei, the most moderate wing is committed to remaining neutral. The first include Macri, Bullrich and around thirty MPs. Among the seconds are the mayor of Buenos Aires from the Pro, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, and the ten provincial governors of the alliance, who will have to negotiate with the election winner when he takes office as president on December 10th.
On Thursday, the shockwave of the embrace muddied the waters of Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party. First to abandon ship was veteran unionist Luis Barrionuevo, a juggler who first welcomed the short-lived presidential candidacy of Kirchnerist Wado de Pedro, joined Milei’s ranks, and then retired. Later there was an exodus of elected representatives into a room that promised to throw out the political caste by Sunday and began negotiating with it on Monday. At the moment it is three out of 40. That same night, Milei was on the verge of collapse in a television interview, in which he was exhausted, disoriented and unable to maintain the thread of his speech in the face of the noise caused by a certain level of noise Union power.
On the other hand, Massa’s victory in the first round – with 36.7% of the vote compared to Milei’s 30% – united Peronism behind him. Internal struggles are frozen and energy is focused in one direction: winning. Until a few months ago, it seemed like an impossible goal. Massa is the economy minister of a country with inflation at 140%, the national currency is in decline, the economy is stagnating and there are no dollars to pay off the debt to the International Monetary Fund. On Sunday two-thirds voted for a change, but on November 19 the options were reduced to two: Massa or Milei. Massa is trying to convince the Argentines that he is the lesser evil.