Argentines will vote in general elections on Sunday that stand to reshape its political map, with both the mainstream parties weakened by the legacy of multiple economic crises and challenged by libertarian outsider Javier Milei.
With annual inflation running at 138 per cent and two-fifths of Argentines living in poverty, the deeply unpopular current president Alberto Fernández, of the centre-left populist Peronist movement, has opted not to run in the presidential election — which will be accompanied by a congressional vote — after almost four years in power.
Former president and current vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, leader of Peronism’s more radical left wing, is also absent from the ballot and has been keeping a low profile in the campaign after a corruption conviction in December last year.
Instead, the Peronist candidate is economy minister Sergio Massa, a seasoned political operator from the pragmatic wing of his coalition. Also running is former security minister Patricia Bullrich, who is on the right of Argentina’s pro-business opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC).
While JxC were the frontrunners until the August primary, they have been upset by Milei, a radical first-term congressman who wants to slash spending by 15 per cent of gross domestic product and dollarise Argentina’s economy.
Milei argues that both Peronism, which has dominated Argentine politics since the mid-20th century, and the 2015-19 JxC government of Mauricio Macri are to blame for Argentina’s chronic economic crises. He is now the narrow favourite to win.
“The others say they will change things but the money [in my pocket] keeps diminishing,” said Evelyn, a 23-year-old assistant in a butcher’s shop in the Buenos Aires slum neighbourhood of Villa 31. “We have to try something new.”
While Argentina’s pre-election polls are unreliable, most pollsters expect Milei to come first on October 22 and enter a second-round run-off against either Massa or Bullrich on November 18.
To win the presidency outright this Sunday, a candidate would need 45 per cent of the vote, or 40 per cent with a 10-point lead over their nearest rival.
Milei’s sudden rise to the forefront of Argentine politics has coincided with a changing of the guard among the two main parties. This is the first election in more than two decades where neither Macri nor a Kirchner will appear on the ballot.
That scenario may lead to a lasting reshuffle in the country’s main political forces, including within Peronism, which has shifted to the left over the past two decades under Fernández de Kirchner’s influence, said Guido Moscoso, director of public opinion at research company Opinaia.
“Peronism is at its weakest moment in 40 years,” he said. “But if Massa does well, he may be able to renew or reconfigure it towards his more [business-friendly] image. It depends on his level of success.”
Nely, a 25-year-old worker in a small grocery store in Villa 31, said she had previously voted for the Peronists and their big-state model, but that she would now back Milei.
“Before, you thought that [Peronism under Kirchner] could improve your life, give you opportunities, let you travel. But it’s clearly not working. I think Kirchnerism is the past.”
Some attendees of a Peronist rally in a Buenos Aires suburb this week appeared less than enthusiastic about Massa, who is known as a political flip-flopper. But they argued that Bullrich and Milei posed a grave risk to Argentina’s working class.
“At first, I didn’t like [Massa], but . . . at least he’s a Peronist,” said Norma Calveyra, a 58-year-old seamstress.
“We don’t want everything to blow up, to lose all our rights,” she added. “With the other two, we’re in the fire.”
JxC, a centre-right coalition unified mostly by its opposition to Peronism, faces an existential crisis if Milei wins.
“There would be incentives for a split between those who would not support Milei legislatively, and those who would, with Macri at the head,” Moscoso said. The former president has said he would support the libertarian in making “reasonable” reforms.
Dealmaking between parties in Congress will be crucial for any of the three candidates to govern since the results of the August primary suggest it is unlikely any of them will hold a majority in either the lower or upper house after Sunday’s vote.
Analysts say Argentina’s precarious financial situation, its most fragile in two decades, will probably force the next president into more orthodox economic policy.
Massa, for his part, promises if elected to stabilise the economy — something he has not achieved in 14 months in government — without neglecting social justice.
The central bank’s net foreign currency reserves are about $7.6bn in the red, and the government is struggling to service snowballing debts to local bondholders. The country is far from meeting the conditions of its $44bn IMF programme and has no access to international capital markets.
Massa has presided over continued central bank money-printing to fund the deficit, something that has pushed up inflation further and devalued the peso. The next government will face pressure to unpick a patchwork of measures introduced by the Peronists to tamp down inflation, including price and foreign exchange controls.
Economists say that process will unleash yet more inflation. If the government loses control of price pressures, the risk of hyperinflation looms.
“All of the buffers for the economy have been eroded . . . There will definitely be a shock in the short term,” said Nicolás Dujovne, former economy minister in the 2015 to 2019 JxC government.
“The only thing on the table is for Argentina to get to the end of 2024 having gone through a difficult year, with hope that we’re going in the right direction,” he added. “Or we could be just as hopeless as we are right now.”
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