After a disastrous showing in Argentina’s open primaries in August, Argentina’s Peronist party made a resounding comeback this week. In the latest chapter in a rollercoaster presidential election, the soft-spoken economy minister, Sergio Massa, snatched what seemed like a sure victory from the jaws of the libertarian Javier Milei, winning 36.6% of the vote against only 29.9% for Milei.
The broad margin was still not enough to avoid a runoff on 19 November between the two most dissimilar contenders imaginable. Although beset by soaring price inflation and a 40% poverty rate, Massa trounced Milei, whose promise to dollarize the economy and legalize the organ trade had catapulted him to surprise victory in August.
But Milei’s party continued to introduce outrageous policy proposals after the primaries, in an apparent attempt to stay in the eye of the news, including a bill obliging women to inform men they had sexual relations with if they became pregnant, and granting men 15 days to accept or reject lifetime economic support as a counterweight to a woman’s right to abortion. That strategy may well have torpedoed Milei’s shot at the presidency.
“Madness can pay off to a certain point, but not beyond that point. People get scared,” wrote the political commentator Ernesto Tenembaum on Monday.
Rather than respond to Milei’s fire with fire, Massa stepped up campaigning, pressing the flesh across the old Peronist bastion of the industrial belt around the capital where 15 million people live – without ever departing from a trademark monotone delivery that even Massa supporters admit can be soporific.
And Massa’s mellow tones – and a promise to embrace figures from other political parties if elected – seem to have worked, mainly in the key electoral district of Buenos Aires, where he obtained 43% of the vote against only 26 points for Milei.
Axel Kicillof – the governor of Buenos Aires province, who was re-elected on Sunday – proved to be the Peronists’ secret weapon, touring tirelessly and inviting opposition politicians to support Massa.
Kicillof made a point of distancing Massa from the two-time president and current vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who Milei voters detest, saying that the primary results proved it was time for Peronism to break with the past.
“I think we have to start shaping a new era. We can’t live any more off [party founders Juan] Perón and Eva,” said Kicillof. “It has a whiff of those rock bands that keep playing their old greatest hits. It’s time to compose a new song, not a song we all already know, a new one,” said Kicillof, who despite his 52 years, has emerged as the face of a younger Peronism.
It also helped that Massa made use of his position as economy minister to obtain a new $7.5bn line of credit from the IMF and announce transitory social aid programs to ease the cost of inflation – about 150% at the moment – on the hardest hit, such as a VAT reimbursement on essentials items credited directly to people’s bank accounts.
Milei also made a mistake by continuing a ferocious campaign of trolling against his compatriot, Pope Francis, after his August primary win, Tenembaum wrote.
“This time, everyone was watching him. The main political forces, which until then had let him walk, understood that he was a threat and transformed him into a moving target,” he wrote. “Argentinian society chose, despite everything, and with everything against it, to put a limit on madness.”
