“I am the king, I am the lion!” » In a song bordering on a roar, ultraliberal candidate Javier Milei harangues his supporters gathered in a packed concert hall in Buenos Aires for his end-of-campaign meeting, Wednesday October 18. For three hours, the assembly of more than 12,000 people was heated by refrains repeating the shocking ideas of the 52-year-old economist: the replacement of the peso, the national currency, by the dollar, the closure of the bank central, a discount draconian public spending and a sharp reduction in taxes.
“Caste [l’élite politique] is scared “, shouted Mr. Milei again, in reference to the balance of power in the elections on Sunday, October 22 – during which 36 million voters will vote for the first round of the presidential election and will elect half of the deputies and 24 of the 72 senators . Most polls put him in the lead. For the first time in Argentina, an outsider has a chance of winning the presidency, in a country usually structured around two historical currents, peronist and anti-peronist.
“Well, that’s great, we’re fed up with all these corrupt politicians”explains Paola Hamasaki, 55, self-employed in digital marketing, who came to cheer Javier Milei. “He is the only one who tells the truth. He has a real plan for the country, in the long term”continues this voter, who voted for the ultraliberal troublemaker in 2021, the year of his emergence into political life and his election as a deputy. “I get tired of working eight hours a day for nothing at all.says Paola Gaitan, a 23-year-old cashier. And in the meantime, there are people who stay in bed in the morning and receive social assistance. Politicians encourage laziness, not Javier Milei! »
Also listen Argentina: Can Javier Milei, the “Argentinian Trump”, win the election?
If the person concerned – who, if elected, will not have a majority in Congress anyway – ensures that he will win in the first round (with therefore 45% of the votes, or 40% and a lead by ten points on the or second), all the polls deny it. Facing him, Sergio Massa, 51 years old, current Minister of the Economy and candidate of the center-left Peronist coalition (in power between 2003 and 2015, then between 2019 and today), and Patricia Bullrich, 67 years old, ex -minister of security, candidate of the center-right coalition Juntos por el Cambio (“United for Change”), which brought Mauricio Macri to the presidency, between 2015 and 2019.
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