The libertarian leader Javier Milei, yesterday, during a campaign activity in La Rioja / milei press
Javier Milei is becoming a stone in the shoe. Or, perhaps, enormous discomfort in both shoes at the same time. It is that both the Frente de Todos and Juntos por el Cambio inevitably perceive Milei’s growth.
The leader of La Libertad Avanza and his disruptive discourse, judging by the opinion polls that are known almost daily, have permeated voters of both spaces. With a steadily increasing social mood, Milei has not only caught support from socially marginalized sectors that traditionally vote for Peronism, but is also preventing the coalition made up of the PRO, the UCR, the Civic Coalition and Republican Peronism, from transforming into a the only electoral vehicle of that citizen rejection of official policies.
Milei and an offer that is sustained based on virulent criticism of what he calls “political caste”, attracts for that attitude. She reflects “the anger” and not an ideological vote. The important thing, for his supporters, is not to dissolve the Central Bank or repeal the compulsory nature of primary education or dollarization.
The libertarian leader fishes in the ever-widening lagoon of collective malaise, a product of the economic crisis in the face of which a sector of the citizenry feels that the traditional political parties have also failed.
It is a situation that is repeated in many countries and that has given rise to the appearance of new leaderships with very different characteristics depending on the country in question. But the irruptions are a phenomenon registered in Europe and that has been reflected in Latin America in Brazil, Peru and Chile for example.
The libertarian leader appears as the most chosen candidate among young people
One of the phenomena recorded in the polls is the ascendancy that Milei is achieving over the young voter. A recent opinion study focused on the age group between 16 and 29 years. And when asked by which political leader they felt most represented, 20 percent of those consulted leaned towards Milei and with only that figure he became the most supported, which demonstrates the crisis of representativeness that threatens the system. With outstanding coaching, Milei adopts phrases from young people such as: “You have to grab the chainsaw.”
This reality generates reactions and changes in the tactics that the leaders use in the present electoral campaign. The most notorious, perhaps, is the one that the current Vice President led in the act that she led a few hours ago at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata. Cristina Kirchner was in charge of shaking Milei, whom she even defined as a “mamarracho”.
Kirchnerism also perceives that it has begun to lose influence over that youth voter who until not so long ago seemed to monopolize La Cámpora. A phenomenon that, they admit in the PJ, is registered in the most marginal neighborhoods of the Conurbano, where Milei is also imagined as an option against an officialism that, they feel, stopped interpreting her concerns and needs.
Together for Change seeks to capture part of the liberal vote by adding Espert
It does not seem coincidental then that Cristina Kirchner has personally taken care of getting Milei into the ring, whom she sought to associate with convertibility and its tumultuous end, by drawing a parallel between that plan devised by Domingo Cavallo and the dollarization that the legislator of the hairs proclaims. scrambled It is also a way to reduce the role of Together for Change and fuel a possible polarization between Peronism and Milei.
A direct confrontation in search of recovering that vote that, from a hard consistency, became permeable to a discourse that condemns a present of sorrows.
Together for Change attends the “Milei phenomenon” wrapped in its own inmates, with a concern similar to the ruling party: the question that raises what ceiling the libertarian leader’s offer could reach.
In search of some brake, sectors of the PRO together with the UCR and the Civic Coalition, closed a deal with José Luis Espert, Milei’s former political partner. In this way, they seek to attract part of liberal voters to the offer of Together for Change.
The move, however, has already unleashed another internal one in the opposition coalition because Patricia Bullrich suspects that, more than the declared intention of adding libertarian votes, what in her opinion is at stake is a maneuver to harm her in the presidential race that she is waging with Horacio Rodriguez Larreta. Basically, she accuses the Buenos Aires mayor of being the one who brought Espert together to be a presidential candidate and take away votes from the former Security Minister.
The point is that, one way or another, the possible arrival of Espert in Together for Change is part of a device that seeks to offer, from that coalition, an alternative to liberal voters.
The doubts that hover over politics is whether all the alchemy in dance will be able to convince voters who, more than ideology, seem to see Milei as a vehicle for anger and disappointment.
