In the end Javier Milei, the libertarian candidate, won by a wide margin, and before the official results were available, Massa already recognized his defeat. Milei is reaching 56% against Sergio Massas’s 44%, far from the victory he was looking for. More than twelve million citizens voted against the government and thus our country enters an important political change, as Peronism centered on Unión por la Patria loses the political power it has held since 2019 and makes way for a Milei government with its defeat, with everything that this implies.
During the entire electoral campaign, we repeatedly analyzed that, although a segment of society was inclined towards a utilitarian vote to stop the rise of the libertarian extreme right, at the same time, in these elections, the notable deterioration of the living conditions of millions was acting strongly, and that this could be expressed in a numerous vote to punish the government. This is what the libertarian, and Macri, who supported him in the runoff, bet on.
Ahora, más que nunca, organizados y en las calles
Ganó Milei. Veremos que parte de su proyecto reaccionario, antiderechos y negacionista intenta aplicar. Pero sea lo que intente no le será fácil lograrlo. Millones lo enfrentaremos en las calles. La pobreza creciente, la… pic.twitter.com/c2vOCfAxAS
— Alejandro Bodart (@Ale_Bodart) November 19, 2023
This is what a majority expressed this Sunday and Milei will be the country’s next president, with Villarruel as vice president. The question in the air is clear: How could such a character win? And the answer is just as clear: he won because of Peronism’s disaster in power, which time and again, in these four years, defrauded millions and opened the doors to the discontent that was expressed in an electoral shift to the right and, above all, in the emergence of a variant outside of the traditional parties, which capitalizes precisely on the discontent of millions with the force that has been governing the country, and also shows political backwardness.
We cannot rule out that media representatives of the ruling party and government officials will raise arguments to justify this defeat. But if we seriously analyze the facts, we once again see the failure of a project that, when it governs, as it did after Macri, it maintains the same economic model, it applies austerity, increases poverty, generates inflation, skyrocketing the dollar and leads millions of families to not making ends meet. All for having started by legalizing Macrism’s fraudulent debt with the IMF and tying itself to the IMF for many years, losing sovereignty and the power to decide.
Ahora, a bancar en las calles: ni un paso atrás.
Massa reconoció su derrota y Milei es el nuevo presidente. Este triunfo de la ultraderecha es la consecuencia del desastre del gobierno del PJ que co-gobernó con el FMI y buscó siempre congraciarse con las corporaciones, nunca…
— Cele Fierro (@Cele_Fierro) November 19, 2023
With this disastrous political and economic strategy, Peronism, in all its variants, was deteriorating the living conditions of millions to the maximum and in this way is responsible for the political rise of Milei, who advanced to this victory, precisely by navigating across the profound crisis that was deepened by the current government, of which Massa is the main minister and directly responsible for the central measures that are carried out. Additionally, he did not confront the right consistently, but instead helped them assemble their list and officials for the primaries. When they saw it got difficult, they installed the “democracy or dictatorship” campaign, and now they are the first to congratulate those who represent that “dictatorship.”
The result also shows the failure of the policy promoted by possibilist sectors that insist year after year on fighting within the PJ (Peronist Justice Party) or within fronts led by that party, wanting to convince thousands that positive changes can be achieved from there. Nothing is further from reality. The PJ is essentially a party of the Argentine bourgeois regime and, as such, when it governs, it never touches the interests of large capitalists and corporations, and, in not doing so, it always navigates between austerity and some other partial and insufficient measure that fails to improve the lives of millions. On the contrary, it generates disappointment among its own voters and supporters and ends up, as can be once again seen now, opening the door to the rise of right-wing variants. The PJ is no longer of any use, it is no alternative, we have to build something big and different, from the left.
From the MST in the Left Front Unity, we have been fighting for years to strengthen a political force alternative to Peronism and all right wing options, and more than ever we will continue to do so. In this runoff, we called for not voting for Milei and we did not campaign for a blank vote, understanding those who wanted to defeat the denialist libertarian, although our party did not vote for Massa either, understanding that his project of austerity and delivery to the IMF could not be supported by the left.
Now, we call on the millions of workers and young people who saw and see a great danger in Milei to prepare, in unity, to confront the incoming Milei government. A new time is coming that will be difficult, complex, with a far-right political project that will attempt to liquidate social and democratic rights, and the only way to stop it will be putting up a fight in the streets. It is organization and mobilization that will put us in better conditions to confront the attempts to curtail our rights. As we said repeatedly throughout this campaign, we must prepare in strength for the country that is coming. The role of the left will be very important and necessary, because, just as the PJ was unable to stop the extreme right at the electoral level, it will not face it in the streets either. Let us remember that Massa himself proposed a government of national unity including the libertarians and in the last debate he acknowledged that he also received Milei to chat in his offices of the Frente Renovador. What is coming is a frontal political and social struggle against a new right-wing project in government and, in the face of this, we cannot repeat failed recipes with the PJ and its project, but instead must strengthen the Left Front Unity more than ever, fighting to change and improve it, and summoning thousands and thousands of disappointed workers and young people, if it really wants to play a prominent and positive role in the great struggles and social upheavals that will come.