The defeated Argentinian presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, who came third in Sunday’s election, has endorsed the libertarian firebrand Javier Milei for next month’s runoff vote.
Bullrich took 23.8% of the vote in the first round, finishing third behind the surprise frontrunner – the economy minister, Sergio Massa, who won 36.7% – and Milei, who took just over 30%.
“The country needs a fundamental change,” Bullrich said on Wednesday, warning against a “continuation of the worst government in history” – a reference to Massa’s Unión por la Patria alliance, led by the former president and current vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Fernández de Kirchner has been in office as either president or vice-president for 12 of the last 20 years and her now-deceased husband Néstor Kirchner was president before her in 2003-07.
“The urgency of the moment forces us not to be neutral,” Bullrich told reporters. “Argentina cannot start a new Kirchnerist cycle headed by Sergio Massa.”
Bullrich’s comments came as her alliance Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change) split into its three constituent parties.
While the former security minister pledged to set aside her “differences” with Milei, Elisa Carrió, of the Civic Coalition party, said she remained horrified by Milei’s policy positions, including the legalization of the organ trade, potentially the sale of sale of children (something he later stated he did not support), and the dollarization of Argentina’s economy, which Carrió has warned would open the country’s financial markets to drug cartels.
“We are not going to jump into the void to sell organs, because it violates human rights, we do not agree with the sale of children and the legalization of drug trafficking, all of this is going to lead to crimes against humanity,” said Carrió.
A third part of the alliance, the centrist Radical party, also declared itself against Bullrich’s new ally, saying in a statement that “the demagogic extremism of Javier Milei is at the antipodes of our thinking.”
The Radical party chief, Gerardo Morales, said he had felt “embarrassed” by Bullrich’s decision.
If Milei can add the 24% of votes obtained by Bullrich on Sunday to his own 30% he will have enough to defeat Massa. But Massa is hoping to steal votes from Bullrich and Milei from supporters disenchanted with their alliance.
Bullrich hails from a patrician family and has held cabinet posts and legislative seats in various governments, representing the very political establishment Milei had vowed to extirpate. It is also doubtful if Bullrich’s conservative supporters can stomach the unorthodox Milei.
But such political malleability comes naturally to the 67-year-old politician whose first step into politics was as a teenage member of the leftwing Montoneros guerrilla group. Bullrich has at different times represented the Peronist party, the centrist Radicals and various conservative alliances.
During the 2023 election campaign Milei dragged up her guerrilla past, accusing Bullrich of “planting bombs in kindergartens”. Bullrich responded by suing for defamation.
Asked at Wednesday’s press conference about the confrontation, Bullrich said she had “forgiven” Milei and was dropping legal charges. Milei for his part claimed that what he had meant to say was that “she threw a bomb in a garden where there was a child”.
A poll published on Wednesday by the anti-Kirchner daily Clarín showed Massa and Milei running neck-and-neck in the runoff, with Milei at 41.6% and Massa at 40.4%, with a 2.4-point margin of error.
The November runoff could be marked by strong absenteeism, with 10.4% saying they would not vote and 7.5% undecided.
