• Next Sunday are the legislative elections in all the country’s provinces. As happened with the elections in the province of Buenos Aires, Javier Milei (and now also Donald Trump) presented these elections as “the mother of all battles”, those that define the future of the political project of the extreme right, the future of the country, etc. It is true that they are important, but it is fundamentally false. What do I mean? Because next Sunday a victory or defeat for the Government is not defined. That defeat has already happened, or is happening right now.
• The crisis defines that defeat. This week, despite the intervention of the US Treasury, the official dollar soared again; financial dollars, even more so. Neither direct intervention nor diplomatic support was enough to contain the persistent depreciation of the peso. “The markets,” let’s put it that way, interpreted the aid as a conditional political operation: in fact, Trump made the rescue subject to the outcome of the elections.
• It is these numbers that reveal a fact as big as a house: the libertarian project, once a State, is shipwrecked.
• On the internal front of the Government, the fractures are evident. The dispute between Santiago Caputo and, ultimately, Karina Milei (although Guillermo Francos is in the middle, accused of being “pro-Chinese”) marks the level of confinement that the Government is going through. The worst thing is that the dispute is over whose feet they surrender or over the contacts that enabled US support.
• It is a Government that handed over control of monetary policy to the US Treasury. In these days, the proposal that some delusional person proposed in 2001 was widely remembered: control of the Central Bank and the Argentine economy had to be handed over to a group of international “technicians” because we Argentines were not qualified. Trained for what? To strictly comply with the draconian plans of the IMF. Well, Milei does, in fact. If that’s not a debacle, I wouldn’t know what to call it.
• The campaign in the province of Buenos Aires is another pathetic expression: with Espert’s resignation, Santilli recycles himself as an improvised candidate, with some crazy spots that embarrass others.
• Everything sets up a project in ruins (regardless of whether or not it survives from now on). Even the Government itself reduced its horizon and moderated its objectives: it no longer aspires to electoral dominance with a sweeping victory – which is not going to happen – but to a legislative minority that allows it to govern by decree and uphold presidential vetoes. In other words: he is not interested in winning an election; It is enough for him to block Parliament with a small minority.
• So, both from the general political point of view and from the immediate tactical-electoral point of view (what the Government itself proposes), it is a defeated project.
• Why is it important to note this? Because it disarms any political operation, any narrative that seeks to extort you with the “lesser evil”: that you have to resign your sympathies, your ideas or the candidates with whom you most agree in order to “vote for the one who—presumably—has the most possibilities.” Juan Grabois even stated that this election is like a runoff. No: it is not a runoff, neither formally nor because of how the scenario is presented. For the same reason that I stated before, the defeat of the Government has already occurred – or, in any case, it can be deepened by seeking to obtain fewer deputies and senators – but that does not determine which candidates you have to vote for on the other side. So, you can choose not those who are thinking in the calculation of “I’ll hang out with this one (although tomorrow he could screw me up) or with the other one, although he’s kind of opportunistic, but there’s no other choice).” No: that is no longer valid in this election. You can simply vote for those who most decisively confronted Milei and will continue to do so; to those who give you the guarantee that they are not going to vote for anything or negotiate anything; to those who are going to face it—as they did from minute zero—in Congress and in the streets.
• Because what is under discussion is not the defeat (which is a fact), but how that defeat is processed. The question is not whether he can be defeated; The question is how we defeat him.
• And there comes the political and programmatic discussion – which we have already raised several times in this space.
• There are the options that say that you have to do the same as Milei, but with other manners. The governor of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaro, was there, parading through the media, proposing more or less this. There are others who say: “Well, we must continue the good and discard the bad.” There are those too.
• And there are also those who affirm that Milei must be stopped, Milei must be stopped, but they do not propose anything from a programmatic point of view about what must be done. It is a “Frente de Todos” mold, thinking more about 2027 than the present. And that political experience was exactly what brought us here.
• Because Milei’s defeat can be tactical or strategic. Let’s think about the dynamics of these far-rights in general. Trump lost, but the Democratic administration was so bad that he won again. Macri lost, but the experience of the Frente de Todos – accepting Macri’s legacy, first of all, the debt – was terrible and a radicalized Macriism returned (Milei is nothing more than that). So defeating him is important, but more important than defeating him is ending the conditions that allowed his rise or that can enable his resurrection.
• The left has that objective and, in this election in which Milei’s defeat is already a fact – and in which the extortions of the “lesser evil” are not valid -, progress can be made in beginning to build a post-mileism that has nothing to do with Milei or his legacy.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
