Juan Carlos Sánchez Arnau. Digital News Agency S.A.
“The only truth is reality”
The disaster announced by certain press and a significant part of the opposition has occurred. Now let's see the magnitude of the disaster, and for that, let’s look at the numbers, the only “serious” way to measure the magnitude of the catastrophe.
The LLA was overwhelmingly defeated by the PJ (now under the motto "Fuerza Patria") by 47.3% to 33.7%, while the new “Somos Buenos Aires” (a diverse coalition of opponents) gathered 5.3% of the votes. In terms of the number of votes
It was 3.2 million against 2.7 million and less than half a million votes for “Somos”.
Let’s compare these results with those of 2023, the previous election for provincial Deputies and Senators: on that occasion “Unión por la Patria,” the version of the PJ at that time, obtained almost 45% of the votes, almost the same result as now. Juntos por el Cambio (the PRO plus the UCR) achieved 26% of the votes, while the LLA harvested 24.5%. Comparing, we see that the PJ did not progress while the LLA grew by more than 9 points. The real debacle was that of the PRO, whose votes were absorbed by the LLA or diluted in “Somos”.
In terms of territorial presence, the PJ had won in all electoral sections except in the Sixth in 2023. This time they also had to forfeit the Seventh. And if we measure the result in terms of deputies and senators, in the Upper House of the Province, the PJ ended up with 24 seats, LLA with 15, and Somos and UCR with 3; on the other hand, in the Chamber of Deputies, Fuerza Patria ended with 21 deputies, LLA with 18, and Somos with 2, with 3 more deputies from other opposition forces to the provincial government, while the Left managed to keep 2 deputies. In short, a strong advance of the LLA, which only put one seat at stake, and a clear setback for the PJ, which maintains control of the Senate but loses it in the lower house.
Other factors to consider in order to analyze these results more accurately are that the level of participation was linked to the nature of this election: only mayoral positions (some), councilors, and provincial deputies and senators were at stake. These were not national elections where the presidency of the country or the composition of the Senate and the National Chamber of Deputies or that of governors are at stake.
Secondly, for that same reason, the mayors “put all the meat on the grill.” Their survival and political future were at stake, which led them to pour all possible resources
to ensure victory. Among them -and here the failure was from the government- the fraud, which was widely possible at many polling stations due to the lack of party officials from the ruling party.
Let’s say. Finally, in many areas of the interior, the “rural vote” was absent: impassable roads, lack of enthusiasm and even of suitable candidates, all played in favor of the PJ candidates in areas where they shouldn't have won given the constitution of the local electorate.
Now let’s see the consequences of these results within each political force. In the PJ, Kicillof imposes himself over Cristina Kirchner, having managed to push forward the provincial elections and win them comfortably in terms of votes. Furthermore, he did so with the support of almost all Peronist mayors. Here arise some interesting conclusions for the future. CFK’s figure becomes further diminished; “La Cámpora” and Máximo Kirchner are relegated from the future leadership of the PJ, and Kicillof emerges as the inevitable PJ candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. Is it good news for the PJ that its future candidate is the least prestigious of the governors? Is he not the ideal opposition candidate for the current national government? And looking further ahead, does a new PJ arise, transformed more into a municipal party of the province of Buenos Aires than a national force as it was in other times?
And peering into that same future, are we not again confronted with the possibility of a new force emerging, formed by governors who no longer feel committed to the national government, given the evidence of its isolationist policy in favor of growing through the LLA and the poor results that this policy has yielded?
And here arises another hypothesis, subtly present in President Milei's discourse after the elections: Will this method of political construction be abandoned and more space granted to those within the government who favored an agreement with other forces, particularly with independent governors? Furthermore, it is evident that the current leadership did not appreciate two important political phenomena. One that is always present in Argentine (and other countries’) politics: discontent (justified or not) with a government generally translates more than into a punitive vote into a vote for the more radicalized opposition, in this case the PJ. The second was a well-orchestrated discredit campaign, based on three words: retirees, disabled people, Hospital Garrahan. The government, which won the national elections supported only by two words (dollarization and “caste”), did not understand that the opposition had learned the lesson and launched a campaign as effective as that one, resting on the political errors the Government made about those three issues (regardless of the underlying reasons the Government had for making the decisions it took regarding them). And the leaders of the official campaign either did not comprehend it or did not know how to respond adequately.
Finally, let’s see the economic repercussions of these results. The first is that both the president and the economy minister have made it clear that they do not intend to modify the pursued policies. “Putting a limit” on these policies will remain an aspiration of the opposition without practical consequences. Secondly, it is very difficult, beyond the inevitable tension on the exchange rate in the first days and the drop in the value of Treasury bonds and the consequent rise in “country risk”, to see a catastrophic situation as announced by the press (many linked to the “party of the devaluation”). The Treasury and the BCRA have ample resources (liquid reserves, the possibility of tighter monetary emission restrictions, taking positions in the futures market) to address those risks and continue, once “the foam settles”, with the anti-inflationary policy that is the focus of this Government’s action. Furthermore, today, after the immediate turmoil, the exchange rate remained only 3% above its last quotation, while the inflation in CABA announced today anticipates that the process of controlling that rate at the national level continues.
Juan Carlos Sánchez Arnau was Argentine Ambassador to Switzerland and Russia, Undersecretary of Economy and Public Works, and held the same position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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