This Sunday night, Javier Milei can give his speech as president-elect of Argentina. That is the most important data in the final stretch of a eternal election campaignbitter and exhausting and after a presidential debate in which the ultra-liberal populist was dominated by the Peronist Sergio Massa, at times almost hypnotized, but despite everything he came out alive.
It was a Sunday night for astonishment, exactly seven days before the second round that will define who is in charge starting December 10 in the Casa Rosada. At the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, Massa completed his masterpiece of the campaign, the split personality that allows him to be a promising candidate. fix everything he couldn’t solve, and even worsened as Minister of Economy and virtual head of the government of the vanished Alberto Fernández.
To do this, he had the help of Milei himself, who probably did not see “Hypnosis”, the recent film starring Ben Affleck in which a simple phrase or word activates a situation of dominance over a person’s behavior. Massa raised this dominance through insistent questions to his opponent, finished off by a mauling. “Answer me, yes or no”. And Milei, docile, answered each of the Peronist candidate’s questions while she wasted precious minutes, to the point that in two hours of debate she had no impact on the 140 percent annual inflation as a symbol of the economic disaster led by the minister.
The debate had unusual moments. Milei even gave time to her rival and praised Margaret ThatcherPrime Minister of the United Kingdom who defeated Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982. Massa, who carefully prepared the duel, appealed to all kinds of resources, information and tricks to destabilize a rival whose main objective was don’t lose control, which he achieved. The minister, with information that is not clear how he obtained, blamed Milei for saying that in her youth the Central Bank did not renew her internship contract, a way of alluding to her emotional fragility. “That’s why you want to demolish it,” he added.
But if the debate was surprising, the post-debate was even more so. While analysts and journalists highlighted Massa’s dominance, various surveys on social networks and the media showed Milei as the clear winner. The ultraliberal candidate believes he knows why. “In the debate, the decision that we Argentines have before us was clearly expressed,” he summarized on the social network a lying politiciancynical, coached, arrogant and arrogant who believes that the State belongs to him; and that he wants to continue doing the same things that have been failing for decades and that only benefit the friends of power. On the other side, a group of citizens who got into the filth of politics to change this decadent reality for which Minister Massa is responsible.”