Elections 2023: Switzerland, Argentina
In Switzerland, the hard right triumphed on rising anti-immigrant sentiment…in Argentina, a Peronist took a surprising lead but with a runoff due against a hard-right libertarian. A 2d round's ahead.
Switzerland’s right turn
VADUZ, Liechtenstein—The Swiss surged to the polls, giving the right-wing an all but unprecedented win and extraordinary plurality in the Swiss parliament—a tribute largely to concern over migrants flooding into a landlocked and so carefully curated nation in the geographic center of Europe.
Swiss right has a lot to celebrate
Fewer than half all the eligible voters (46.6% went to the polls, but when the returns were in, the Swiss People’s Party [UDC] were the big winners, the Greens were the big losers. With 28.6%, the People’s Party added 3% points since the last vote in 2019), while the leftwing Greens plunged nearly 4% points.
At least for the moment, fears that glaciers have been melting at a frightening pace due to climate change seemed to take a back seat to worries that one nation that has remained largely impervious to the waves of migrants engulfing Europe from the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan and most recently Ukraine, could play havoc with the orderly, homogeneous Swiss way of life.
The view from Vaduz castle is west to Switzerland // Photo by the author
Indeed, with snow still lingering through the summer on the high peaks, despite 50-degree temperatures at the base of Alpine redoubts, the Peoples Party based their campaign on a simple and easily-understood pledge—to keep the nation’s population, currently at a modest 8.7 million, from ever exceeding 10 million.
"We have problems with immigration, illegal immigrants, and problems with the security of energy supply," said UDC leader Marco Chiesa. "We already have asylum chaos. A population of 10 million people in Switzerland is a topic we really have to solve."
In the uniquely Swiss system, however, critical issues like pensions are traditionally settled by national referendums rather than through parliament or in the streets as has been the case in neighboring France.
"The progressive zeitgeist of the four years ago has disappeared. After four years of crises, with coronavirus and Ukraine, people are more conservative than they were in 2019," Michael Hermann, a political analyst at pollsters Sotomo, told Reuters.
None of this, of course, is likely to dent in any fashion Switzerland’s long and dearly held neutrality in international affairs that is traditionally in the hand of a permanent rotating government leadership that will remain in charge despite the weekend vote.
Argentina’s surprise
Peronistas hung on—as they have for some 70 years, much to the surprise of many Argentines, certainly the nation’s incorrigible pollsters who’d predicted a surge by the young darling of the far right. The results will be Javier Milei in second place, with few suspecting that Sergio Massa, the nation’s incumbent economy minister, having surged to a more than 6% point lead.
As Andelman Unleashed reported on September 10, quoting The Economist, one of a host of international media to miss the boat, “Argentina needs saving. Annual inflation is 113% [now, 6 weeks later 138%]. The peso’s black-market value against the dollar has fallen by half this year. After decades of economic mismanagement, mostly under Peronist administrations, Argentines are fed up with their venal and incompetent politicians. Their dismay has helped propel Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian and ‘anarcho-capitalist’ who entered Congress only in 2021, to become the front-runner. Even by the standards of Argentine politics, he can sound eccentric: he is said to have hired a medium to consult Conan, his dead mastiff.” The novice candidate of La Libertad Avanza in his first campaign for national office, often wears leather jackets, and his corrosive style has drawn comparisons with former President Donald Trump and Brazil’s unseated rightwing leader Jair Bolsonaro.
The problem for Milei was that neither dead dogs nor the supernatural was able to boost him much past his vote from the August primaries, not a good sign when it comes to the final two-man runoff with Sergio Massa, candidate of the Peronistas, who vaulted 15% points above his dismal showing in the primaries. Quite a similar scenario has met other far-right candidates, most recently France’s Marine Le Pen whose vote in the second round of the last French presidential elections failed to surpass sufficiently her first-round vote, leaving a somewhat debilitated Emmanuel Macron snatching a second term. In Argentina, moderate conservative Patricia Bullrich, popular with the establishment and business circles, ended shy of 24%, yet her 6.3 million votes, if many go to even more conservative Milei in the second-round, could give him the boost he needs.
What’s particularly stunning in Argentina is that since Massa assumed his job as economic czar in August 2022, annual inflation in Argentina has nearly doubled from a whopping 79% to a staggering 138%. At the same time, the cost of a black-market US dollar, the preferred currency for most Argentines with a savings account since their own currency is so rapidly deflating, has more than tripled from 300 pesos to 1,000. Yet it would appear, a Peronista can do no (or little) wrong—at least in the eyes of the bulk of Argentine voters.
Still, it’s not unlikely that some of Milei’s more far-out ideas just might have given pause even to those Argentines anxious for a change. To cope with the peso-dollar dilemma, he’s proposed dollarizing the entire economy, making the US dollar the only legal tender—which would make Argentina the largest of 11 other countries to have taken such a step. The only other one in South America is the deeply troubled nation of Ecuador where drug gangs have been running wild. The problem with this idea is that Argentina would effectively lose all control over its economy and its monetary policies, its central bank utterly emasculated and unable to regulate exchange rates.
For the Peronistas, Massa represents a comfortably-known status quo. Since 1946, adherents of this leftist political movement have won 10 the 13 elections where they’ve been allowed to run. Massa would be succeeding Peronist president Alberto Fernandez.
And for the final outcome, be sure to rendezvous back here on November 19. Stay tuned.
The real political power in Argentina is with the president who has the role of both head of state and head of government, presides over 'his' cabinet and really does set the tone and direction of Argentina....never before more important than today !!
Where does the legislative power in Argentina lie, and what power is that?