Javier Milei, the controversial right-wing character who emerged from television studies and a candidate for deputy for the Libertad Avanza libertarian party, got 13.6% of the votes in the city of Buenos Aires in the recent Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primary Elections (Paso).
The political party led by Milei, which claims to maintain an “almost natural alignment” with Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump, has thus become the third most voted force in the Argentine capital, after Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) – formed by the PRO ( Maurício Macri), by Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and by a non-Kirchnerist sector of Peronism – and the ruling Frente de Todos (FdT) – formed by various sectors of Peronism and led by Kirchnerism.
With an increasingly recurrent speech, based on insults, complaints, discrimination against women and insults to all those who do not agree with his ideas, Milei reached an “anti-political” profile, which led him to even describe the entire political leadership as a “caste”.
Phrases like “I don’t know if leftists hate to shower, or work with dice” or “not to do charity out of my pocket, that’s easy, with other people’s asses we’re all whores” showed how the Libertad Avanza leader exerts publicly strong verbal violence.
Milei’s good performance in the internal elections, and with a view to the general elections to be held on November 14, seems to affect his competitors, especially considering that, within the Juntos por el Cambio coalition, another candidate with a libertarian profile, Ricardo López Murphy, from the United Republicans party, obtained significant electoral support (11.2%) and it is projected among opinion pollsters that part of these votes may migrate to Milei.
It is sometimes difficult to understand the “Milei phenomenon”, considering that he got around 220,000 votes, concentrated in a single district. Milei’s controversial figure appears to be getting more media coverage because JxC leadership is very concerned about what will happen to the votes he has attracted in Buenos Aires.
Probably the most worrying is not the presence of a well-received candidate in the federal capital, who constantly expresses his aversion to politicians and politics, nor his timeless speeches, which, from the simplest point of view, demand that the state disappear from the galaxy. What is really worrying is that a large part of Argentina’s ruling class seems determined to tune in to this discourse.
On the right, former PRO president Mauricio Macri said, alluding to Milei: “I hope we meet for 2023” and “I’m a first-time liberal and we have the same ideas.”
Meanwhile, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, head of the PRO government in Buenos Aires (to whom Milei once said, “…like the fucking leftist you are, you can’t even shine a liberal’s shoes, you turd. crush even in a wheelchair”), is busy organizing meetings with young followers of the libertarian candidate.
In turn, the current president of PRO, Patricia Bullrich, maintains an excellent relationship and a very fluid dialogue with Milei.
The pro-government Frente de Todos also unreservedly presented a “very Milei” turnaround shortly after the announcement of the adverse primary election results.
The ruling party’s new cabinet has named Juan Manzur, a sworn enemy of women and abortion rights, and a strong lobbyist for laboratories, as chief of staff. In security, Aníbal Fernández, who allegedly promoted a database of social and political activists used for espionage, has resurfaced. And Julián Domínguez, a friend of the Rural Society and the Catholic Church, was appointed Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.
Thus, Milei seems to be generating a world of cowardly, reactionary, and violent sensations on both sides of divided Argentina.
From the point of view of electoral arithmetic, it is understandable that if Milei obtained a high percentage of votes in the city of Buenos Aires, the candidates in the capital would try to attract his vote in the general elections.
But it’s worth asking if it wouldn’t be more honest, more dignified and less pathetic to veil Milei’s string of incongruous and violent statements rather than join in his speeches or invite him to join one of the two coalitions that today they monopolize political power in Argentina.
You don’t have to be an economist or an expert in anything to understand that the state at various latitudes generates a comfortable welfare state; or to understand that the total deregulation of the economy has also wreaked havoc in several nations, including Argentina.
On the other hand, who agrees that it is right for the State to spend excessive resources and for those who govern to administer public resources in an inefficient and/or dishonest manner? Nobody.
An omnipresent state, which intrudes on citizens’ private lives and which spends badly or steals what it collects through its taxes, does us a great disservice. And we don’t need a Milei to understand this.
Finally, it is worth asking why the focus is on this reactionary, misogynist and violent character, who won third place in the legislative primaries in just one district of the country, when the Left Front and Workers – Unity in the city of Buenos Aires stayed in fourth place, at the same time that it ranked third in the Province of Buenos Aires, the “mother of all battles” (so called because it is the district with the most voters) and third place at the national level.
We live in a democracy and it’s great that there are voters with different preferences, but it might be useful to stop and reflect on certain issues that are presented as maxims and maybe minimal, and remember that the last thing Argentina needs today is to play with extremes and appeal to the fanaticism of violent characters.
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