Contrary to what one might think, society is doing more and better. Even if, paradoxically, he votes against what analysts believe is best for those voters. Even if they vote differently than their union or neighborhood leaders, they tell them what’s best for them. Even and fundamentally when they – it seems – vote against their own interests.
But it’s not like that.
Even if they don’t vote, they join the now one-third of all voters who have decided not to vote.
Authoritarians don’t like that
The practice of professional and critical journalism is a mainstay of democracy. That is why it bothers those who believe that they are the owners of the truth.
And the third voter who chose La Libertad Avanza and the third who decided to stay at home so as not to vote against La Libertad Avanza are doing so so that the government continues with its plan. A plan that excludes and harms many of these voters, but whose voting decision is both practical and transcendent.
Practically, because if they voted against what harms them, they would harm themselves even more in the short term, and they have no peace of mind to weather the turbulence of a hasty change in the economic plan. And transcendent, because after winning the 2023 elections, La Libertad Avanza cannot claim that they did not allow it.
And it has a double value, because although he suffers from the negative consequences of a drug that it is not known whether it will cure him, he nevertheless carries out a transfer in a disciplined manner, leaving the supposed object of knowledge to the doctor and leaving his body to the experiment. The value increases when you’re dealing with a group of people who are considered anything but docile.
That the most rebellious people in Latin America, and after the French perhaps one of the most rebellious in the world, patiently accepts the traumatic exercise of a person who sees himself as a savior, even though he knows that he is only one of them, is an unmistakable message to all those in power, but also and above all to the leaders of the future: there is a society that does not just decide to maximize its immediate benefits.
An almost fatal blow to Peronism, the main actor in the political conspiracy of the last almost forty years, when it won the 1987 midterm elections against Alfonsín and ended radicalism as a self-sufficient presidential electoral contest. And also an almost fatal blow to the following anti-Peronist alliances, that of Fernando de la Rúa in 1999 and that of Mauricio Macri in 2015.
But also a perhaps fatal blow for La Libertad Avanza and its allies, with Patricia Bullrich being the greatest symbol of the continuity of these two processes that have dashed the hopes of millions: De la Rúa’s Labor Minister and Macri’s Security Minister. The photo of her holding a placard denouncing the 2.4% monthly inflation rate in the last years of Kirchnerism that Cristina Kirchner has invoked – increasingly resembling the reduced role of the sharp commentator of Menem’s former vice president Carlos Ruckauf – while the libertarians today, two years after it began, record 2.5% inflation in the last month of what was considered a successful anti-inflation plan, reflects the nonsense of all stories.
No one is exonerated and voters who castigate themselves by voting for the political force that has already proven to be their punishment after two years of holding power are also doing so to pay for their own responsibility in previous elections. They radiate a message of self-atonement that many contemporary political actors do not understand is also directed against them. Anyone who believes they are the winner of the last election is not decoding the content of the message.
“Bullrich is the epitome of the continuity of two processes that shattered illusions.”
The map of forces that emerged from last October’s elections is as volatile as the previous one. The champion’s friends, quickly and warmly welcomed into his hosts, will transform like Patricia Bullrich, prima donna of neo-decadence. She combines the signs of those years, wins elections and leads polls and is in reality the opposite and alter ego of Milei.
His contribution this week at the Techint Group’s Pro-Pymes event with Paolo Rocca, attempting to explain work modernization, could not have been more misguided, both for its importance and for its inscrutable syntax and lackluster speaking style.
That Argentine society is elevating her to the forefront of politics is part of the same paradox that accompanies Milei’s election as president. Characters of a transition, drivers of the exit vehicle of an era that is passing through its final stage.
Society votes well by putting those it exposes at the center and forcing fate to play its cards without excuses. The later time will come for synchronous leaders who will correct the damages that must be paid at the conclusion of an era and build on the successes that this dystopian era also brings when failure and success come together.
Tune in well by not demanding anything from the present. Vote for a different future, different from the past, but also different from the present, which intensifies it so much that it comes to an end.
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