Anylogic comments7/11/2023 ![]() Yet current opinion polls do not show the two main coalitions and Javier Milei’s libertarians attracting more than three-quarters of the electorate so that just reaching double digits (a target also chased by the far left) could carry considerable clout in a fragmented scenario. ![]() Nevertheless, the failures of both the current and previous presidencies seem to be distancing both coalitions from that middle road which lacks strong alternatives – either an increasingly uncomfortable Rodríguez Larreta or a centrist alliance which (like Massa’s Renewal Front before it) has problems in becoming anything broader than a dissident Peronist faction. Both these contrasting directions run the danger of converging on a common road towards totalitarianism.Īgainst these extremes the two main coalitions still have the chance of staying in the middle – this Frente de Todos administration began by defining itself as a centre-left government (in that order since AIberto Fernández was nominated for president by a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner relegating herself to vice-president) while Juntos por el Cambio always branded itself as centre-right with Congress weakness obliging the Mauricio Macri presidency to be considerably more the former than the latter. Yet panic can also lead to a feeling of nothing to lose more than nothing to fear, tempting people to take the plunge into the unknown with the far right or the far left displacing the current political establishment. On the one hand, a paralysing fear can lead people to cling to the status quo at any cost – within the current Argentine context this might favour the current government along “better the devil you know” lines but it might also feed some ultra-conservative option. ![]() These levels of panic can take society in two different directions, both of them open-ended. Far from seeking calm, the two main coalitions go stoking these fears at every turn – on one side we have Security Minister Aníbal Fernández talking of “blood in the streets” and on the other, leading opposition figures openly forecast a hyperinflation still regarded as improbable by virtually every professional economist alongside an exaggeratedly negative picture of the general situation (not to mention the uncertainties created by Juntos por el Cambio infighting). Today’s rapidly changing technology accompanied by the global upheavals of the past three years make the absence of uncertainty impossible for any prudent mind but the prevailing mood in the build-up to this year’s elections is more like mindless panic. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural speech nine decades ago worked wonders against a much deeper depression in the United States but finds few listeners in today’s Argentina. ![]() Fear seems to be paralysing the population at every point of the social fabric in what was once the dynamic immigrant country forging that middle-class identity. But when the only certainty is uncertainty, any logic evaporates. Any normal logic would dictate that any society with such a strongly middle-class image as the Argentine would correspondingly plant its politics in the middle. Other leaders without this credibility gap are available to head this centrist option (various non-Kirchnerite Peronists with ample gubernatorial or ministerial experience while some would also name Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta from mainstream opposition ranks) but the question then arises as to whether they would have anything worth leading in the current context.
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