ARGENTINA: THE PERONIST MASSA WINS AND WILL GO TO THE BALLOT WITH ‘EL LOCO’ MILEI

Unexpected. The return of Peronism surprised observers and analysts. SergioMassa, Minister of Economy, the prodigal son of Peronism, defeated the madman, that’s what they call him, Javier Milei, 53, the anarcholiberal who seemed unstoppable. Argentina goes to the ballot on November 19, but the victory in the first round of the histrionic Milei has been avoided. Massa gets 36.6% of the votes, Milei 30%.

Now, the two winners will have to deal with the ‘la piba’, Patricia Bullrich, who took 23% on Sunday. La piba: 67 years old, a past in the Montoneros, exiled in Brazil during the Argentine dictatorship… But right-wing.

Today, however, is Massa’s day.

Of Italian origin, 51 years old, he is a long-standing Peronist capable, in his 30 years of political career, of swearing loyalty to the leaders of the party (Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández deKirchner) only to retract, challenge them and wait for them to “go to jail, for corruption.”

Now… counter-order comrades, there is full agreement again. Voluble ideology and unbridled ambition. That’s how theirs speak, not even unofficially. One of them, to “explain” Sergio Massa to foreign journalists, says that in life, in Argentina, he often changes his wife, job and place of residence. But not the team of the heart, the soccer team, of course. Here, Massa was a fan first of San Lorenzo, then of Chacarita and finally of Tigre. “Why do Argentines continue to vote Peronist? Neither for the economy (broken), nor for corruption (high), nor for insecurity (heavy). Why? It’s an act of faith.” This is the analysis of Carlos Malamud, authorized commentator of the Elcano Royal Institute of Madrid.

The mad Milei, however, goes to the ballot with the prodigal son of Peronism and was not underestimated: It is impossible to know if Conad, Milei’s English mastiff, who died in 2017, had foreseen the result.

Certainly, the presidential candidate Milei, through a medium, came into “contact” with the dead dog and spoke. He tells it himself. The other dogs, the living, are heteronyms, Fernando Pessoa would say, of liberal economists whose owner (always Milei) is inspired by television broadcasts when he explains his economic policy programs. That’s right, his dogs are Milton (as Milton Friedman), Murray (as Rothbard), Robert and Lucas (as Robert Lucas).

Yes, the Buenos Aires of bookstores open day and night, the city with an extraordinary theatrical programming that rivals Paris, the cultured city with the highest number of psychoanalysts per inhabitant, attends a grotesque spectacle: the election of a president who, whatever the ballot, will reach the lowest point in 40 years of democracy. A (non)debate based on swear words, the chainsaw with which Milei would like to exterminate the opponents of the “Caste” and the painful aftershocks of a Peronist, the current Minister of Economy, Massa, who promises to solve the problems of macro-financial stability that he has only aggravated in the last 4 years. Inflation is 140%, the poor exceed 40% of the population and the devaluation of the peso, the Argentine currency, breaks new records every day. The Central Bank’s reserves? To zero. The blue dollar, the one that is bought on the streets of the city, has exceeded 1000 pesos, three times more than the official one.

This leads to the unhealthy idea, accepted by some millions of Argentines, that it is plausible to dollarize the country, that is, to abolish the Argentine currency and use the greenback. An option that was already taken by former Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo and that led to default and street riots in 2001. At 51 years old, Massa has been almost everything in Argentine politics. But not “tenant of the Casa Rosada.” And now he’s really trying. Faced with the human weakness of getting on the bandwagon of the winners and getting off just before the blow, Massa is credited with great merit: “Assuming positions (the last one as Minister of Economy) for those who have no competition.”

A melancholic tango, that of Carlos Gardel, before the next episode, the ballot: ‘Mi Buenos Aires querido’.

Roberto Da Rin, an Italian journalist, is the International Editor of Il Sole 24 Ore.

This article was originally published in Il Sole 24 Ore, from Italy