Second only to Venezuela, Bolivia is the country in Latin America that moved the most to the left over the last two decades. The political pendulum was expected to swing to the extreme right, à la Javier Milei in Argentina or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. But last week’s elections showed a surprising caveat – a more centrist senator, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, came in first. He still needs to face a second round against a more right-wing candidate, Jorge ‘Tuto’ Quiroga but nevertheless, the prior consensus was that the final race would be just right versus extreme right.
In Argentina, a new centre is trying to emerge too. That’s nothing new, it’s something that has been tried in the past – and failed. All odds continue to point toward a clear-cut polarisation between the government of President Javier Milei and the followers of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, currently held under house arrest serving a sentence for corruption charges. Milei and his people are making it explicit on the campaign trail: “Kirchnerism Never Again” is the unoriginal campaign slogan, too plain to be meaningful and too narrow to be majoritarian. On the other side, anti-Milei sentiment is one of the only things that keeps the quarrelling Peronist family united.
The new centrists, meanwhile, are led by the governors of two powerful provinces, home to the core of the country’s farming and manufacturing lobbies, Córdoba and Santa Fe. One of the them, Córdoba’s Martín Llaryora, is a Peronist. The other, Santa Fe’s Maximiliano Pullaro, is a member of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). The three other governors involved come from Argentina’s resource-rich provinces, who feel empowered by the prospects of getting billions in FDI: Claudio Vidal from Santa Cruz (oil and gas, gold), Ignacio Torres from Chubut (oil and gas, uranium) and Carlos Sadir from Jujuy (mining, especially lithium).
Their “United Provinces” (Provincias Unidas) front might not make a big splash at the ballot-boxes this year. In fact, the new alliance is not fielding candidates in all provinces, only in the regions these five govern, plus Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires Province, where they will most likely come in a distant third or even fourth.
The governors, though, are looking ahead. Some have presidential ambitions and will be willing to make the leap to the national arena in the coming years. Pullaro said it explicitly, declaring: “The next president will come from this group.”
The Bolivian centrist trend, however, is possibly the exception that confirms a rule. Extremes continue to be increasingly appealing for publics across the globe. A group of social scientists recently studied the phenomenon and their conclusion was simple: radical leaders make people feel more important, as if they mattered. “When a leader’s political vision is perceived as bold and revolutionary, it raises the importance of the cause among their supporters. As commitment to an important cause fulfills the need for personal significance, supporting a radical leader becomes psychologically gratifying,” states ‘Motivational underpinnings of support for radical political leaders,’ an article published recently in the European Journal of Social Psychology.
By contrast, the centre is dull. It appeals to pragmatism and dialogue, not dogma and confrontation. Argentines are not alone in their decision to vote for flamboyant figures like Milei wielding his chainsaw or Fernández de Kirchner with her electronic ankle monitor, rather than a boring technocrat type like Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who not long ago was viewed as the next sure thing.
Why would it be different for Llaryora or Pullaro? One possible difference is that the polarised crack continues to deliver no results. Argentina under Milei is already on a stagnation path: the economy contracted 0.7 percent in June versus May, the second consecutive drop, according to INDEC’s EMAE measurement.. Tension over the congressional agenda – President Milei is fighting a teenage boy with autism on social media as he defends a veto on disability benefits overturned by Congress.It all adds to a combo of evidence that shows it’s difficult to shout a country into economic and social prosperity.
The centre might be the only viable solution for a country like Argentina, which continues to have irreconcilable debates about how to organise itself (less or more government, benefits, assistance, economic freedom or isolation?). But who would vote for a dull, rationality-driven politician when you have the angry mob hurling insults and incendiary diatribes that promise to fix today’s problems yesterday?
Delayed gratification and boredom are not in the Zeitgeist of the hour.
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