There are presidential primary elections in Argentina tomorrow. Voting is compulsory but there’s no real punishment for staying at home. Still, participation should be well north of 70% so what we’ll have by Monday morning is a very accurate opinion poll. For a standard analysis of the leading candidates look no further than Americas Quarterly It’s a brave attempt to render Argentine politics in terms comprehensible to the general reader. But it obscures as much as it illuminates. This is not the race for Mayor of Des Moines. Terms such as left and right, liberal and conservative etc. are not very helpful. And no one is interested in human rights in the way that term is generally understood in the West.
This upcoming presidential election is a step in the reordering of political power occasioned by the decline of kirchnerismo, the hegemonic strain of peronismo over the last twenty years. Despite what you may have read in The Guardian neither peronismo nor kirchnerismo are left or right or in favour or against human rights. They are what they are; the former a second layer of national identity and the latter its dominant political expression since 2003. Tomorrow many peronista voters will cast their ballots for opposition candidates without the slightest feeling that they are compromising this identity for doing so. Significant figures in the opposition either began their careers as peronistas or continue to regard themselves as such even as they attempt to defeat Sergio Massa, the peronista presidential candidate and currently the Economy Minister. Patricia Bullrich, the “conservative” opposition candidate was once an enthusiastic member of the Peronista youth movement, as well as Montoneros, its revolutionary arm in the 1970s. She’s hated by many kirchneristas for having abandoned her youthful adherence to revolutionary violence, since reimagined as a form of human rights activism.
It’s impossible to be sure how the vote will go as opinion polls are unreliable. What does seem certain is that it’s unlikely to be a good day for Sergio Massa. 120% inflation, 40% poverty and empty central bank coffers seldom bode well for incumbent candidates. Massa will regard it as a win if he comes in far enough ahead of the trash squadrista, libertarian candidate Javier Milei to suggest that he’ll make it to the second round of voting when the real election is held in October. If he comes in behind Milei, well, it’ll be the biggest crisis in peronismo for a very long time.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has been notably quite, indeed silent, in recent weeks. A sign she doesn’t want to be associated with a losing Massa and may be thinking of setting herself up as the leader of not so much the opposition as a resistance movement when, as seems certain, the opposition comes to power in December. She still has an iron grip on, at a guess, 20 or 25% of the vote, not enough to make her president now but plenty to form a base for a new assault on power in four years. And plenty to make the life of the next government a misery. Despite what you may have read she’s not been proscribed by the courts after having been convicted on corruption charges. The sentence is under appeal, she could run if she wanted to.
On the opposition side it’s either Rodríguez Laretta or Patricia Bullrich. The former is the Governor (Mayor is not an accurate term) of Buenos Aires City and preaches dialogue, incremental change, and understandings with elements of peronismo. Bullrich, very popular with the police and gendarmerie from her time as Security Minister under Mauricio Macri, preaches law and order and if both aren’t available then definitely the latter. But the chaos of Argentine life can’t be eliminated by an act of will. Attempts to do so are likely to make it worse. And the security forces can’t be relied on not to kill people. Rodríguez Laretta is painted as a milquetoast by supporters of Bullrich but his approach is the only viable one, assuming any approach to reforming Argentina is viable. This may well be doubted.
One of them looks very likely to become President. Regardless of which of them it is, the bulk of peronismo, the unions and the social movements will move heaven and earth to bring them down. Progressive intellectuals will pitch lachrymose op-eds to the NYT and The Guardian arguing that Bullrich or Rodríguez Laretta represent a return to the 1976-83 dictatorship, Amnesty and HRW will pronounce themselves to be concerned about the state of democracy and human rights. There’ll be constant strikes and the center of Buenos Aires will be even more frequently reduced to chaos by demonstrations than it is now.
There’s no solution to the problem of Argentina.