Electoral defeat as a symptom of a systemic crisis

By Fernando Esteche, from Buenos Aires / Argentina

The results of the district elections held on September 7 in the province of Buenos Aires (which accounts for 40% of the electoral roll) have revealed a crisis that goes far beyond traditional electoral analysis. With a 39% abstention rate and a gap of more than 13 points between Peronism (47.28%) and La Libertad Avanza (33.71%), we are witnessing not only a defeat for the ruling party, but also the electoral expression of a crisis of representation that affects the entire Argentine political system.

The magnitude of the abstention rate is the most revealing statistic: it expresses not only electoral apathy but a profound disaffection with formal politics, reviving, under different historical conditions, the “let them all go” sentiment of 2001. This disaffection transcends party lines and reveals the exhaustion of current forms of representation. The betrayal of the democratic promise burns once again in the memories of older generations and emerges in new ones with an alienation from formal politics that will inevitably be expressed in the October electoral figures.

Therefore, both voting and not voting express a challenge to the national government.

The current crisis cannot be understood as a superficial phenomenon. It involves superstructural fractures that permeate the entire dominant bloc and manifest themselves in multiple dimensions. The fragmentation of the establishment is accelerating rapidly: provincial governors, who constituted a key link in the libertarian project’s governance chain, are taking a strategic distance. Their relationships with financial sector companies place them in a position to handle privileged information, and everything indicates that these sectors are withdrawing their support for the Mileíst experiment.

The very media system that decisively helped to establish him is now showing significant cracks. Except for a small handful of mercenary rhetoric, the editorial lines of the mainstream media were unequivocal in condemning, exposing, and launching a scheme to undermine the government. This expresses the weariness and the gameplay of a sector of the dominant bloc with a local seat, revealing that the crisis of the Mileíst movement has begun to be interpreted by the dominant sectors as an experiment that no longer guarantees stability.

The sectors of economic power—both the foreign sector that guides the destiny of a subordinate country and the local sector that benefits from this accumulation model—clearly interpret the message: the experiment cannot regulate the political variables that, unchecked, can lead to instability. This interpretation by the financial establishment is crucial because it marks the moment when the dominant sectors are preparing the ground to abandon an experiment, they consider exhausted.

Argentina, the IMF and the geopolitical imperative of the United States

Weakening from above: Anatomy of an accelerated collapse

The depth of the crisis of Mileísmo does not stem from popular resistance, nor does it worsen because the opposition has the reflexes or capacity. The accelerated weakening of the government is fundamentally a phenomenon occurring “from above,” expressing internal contradictions within the ruling bloc rather than organized social discontent.

The corruption scandals involving the presidential entourage are not accidents but the inevitable expression of a structurally corrupt political project. The crisis is not merely moral but political and economic. The sectors that initially supported the libertarian experiment are beginning to experience the abandonment of their interests and the project’s inability to articulate the internal contradictions of Argentine capitalism.

The internal fracture of the dominant bloc is manifested between those who rely on short-term speculative plunder and those who understand that a certain state capacity is necessary for long-term capitalist accumulation. Millenism confronts its inability to articulate these contradictions, generating instability that ultimately harms even its own initial beneficiaries.

While the Buenos Aires province election campaign was underway, the government deepened the world’s largest financial circus, with a speculative player in Argentina achieving monthly rates of 11%, unmatched anywhere else in the world for a full year. The numbers are revealing: the monetary base of a government that denies issuing currency grew 500%, while $15 billion has left the financial system since the currency restrictions were lifted.

This financial system, which expands while employment and wages contract, constitutes a program to transfer resources from Argentines to financial capital, which finds its central tool in the eventual devaluation. The financial establishment that initially celebrated Milei’s arrival is beginning to express concerns about the sustainability of the model, as it perceives that the cycle of plunder is coming to an end while political instability threatens the continuity of the speculative system.

Milei’s visit to Michael Milken —the “junk bond king” and former financial crime convict—illustrates the subordinate nature of the libertarian project. The meeting with US corporations, including JP Morgan, where the entire Argentine economic cabinet worked (or works), constitutes a scene in which the president appears as a subordinate puppet, highlighting the crisis of a decaying power.

Social passivity and resolution from above

Paradoxically, the ruling party’s electoral defeat did not translate into an immediate awakening of organized social discontent. The immediate social reaction was one of passivity and expectation. The same alienation and democratic disillusionment expressed in electoral abstention devours the possibility of a collective social response to the ongoing anti-national attack.

This situation does not eliminate the existence of small pockets of resistance, but they are overexposed and over-repressed at minimal cost to the government. Repression is not reactive but fundamentally preventive, seeking to anticipate and neutralize the social protests that the deepening of the austerity measures will inevitably generate.

The crisis of legitimacy and power is “from above” and will be resolved “from above” in the short term. The political system anticipates the crisis and accelerates negotiations to rebuild a space of power that ensures governability, regardless of the specific electoral results.

In this context, Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof is positioning himself as the unavoidable point of reference for the rest of the political power players. The election result places him among a narrow political power structure that is preparing to navigate the crisis. Kicillof should not be equated with the entire political system, because he will be an indispensable point of reference for overcoming this crisis, even capable of opening up spaces to generate minimal gains in favor of the popular camp.

In the necessary restructuring of the political system, he emerges as a leader capable of coordinating with social actors who function as vehicles for channeling mechanisms to contain the outflows of the crisis. He is not an insurgent, but someone who can restore governability and systemic normality by broadening the state’s social base, above all by recovering state capacity.

Economic power maintains dialogue with all actors in a political system that it continues to influence in the design of economic and political planning. In this framework, Kicillof represents an alternative that can offer governability without breaking with fundamental dominant interests, but also opens up spaces for policies more favorable to the popular sectors.

Argentina: When the People Say Enough

Transition Scenario and Perspectives

The legislative elections of October 26th are shaping up to be the moment that will determine the speed of the Mileísta collapse and the conditions for the political transition. A significant electoral defeat for the ruling party will precipitate the crisis of the project, but it will also accelerate negotiations between the dominant sectors to find an “orderly” solution that preserves their fundamental interests.

The context of high abstention and political disaffection creates a scenario where the results may not reflect a national will, but rather the differential capacity of political forces to mobilize their bases in a context of widespread disinterest.

The crisis of the Mileíst project is also unfolding in an international context, where the US establishment that supports it is undergoing a hegemonic crisis. As global multipolarity consolidates and the United States faces internal crises, the Argentine government is deepening its subordination to the declining empire, further limiting its room for maneuver.

Final reflections: Between collapse and systemic recomposition

The terminal crisis of Mileism is not only the crisis of a government, but the crisis of a national model that must be resolved in the short term. Argentina faces a redefinition that transcends immediate electoral alternatives, where government corruption acts as a catalyst for broader political processes that expose the contradictions of the libertarian project.

The historic task is to prevent the crisis of Mileism from being resolved from above through a simple replacement of figures that maintains the dependent nature of the model intact. However, the immediate social passivity and the resolution of the crisis “from above” suggest that, at least in the short term, the recomposition of the political system will occur within the framework of capitalist governance and with Western subordination, with Kicillof as the articulator of a transition that seeks to combine systemic stability with some concessions to the popular sectors.

* Fernando Esteche is PhD in Social Communication (UNLP), full professor of International Relations (FPyCS – UNLP), professor of Contemporary Latin American History at the University of Plata, Buenos Aires and the director of PIA Global.