الكاتب: kafej

نشرت في: 20/11/2023 – 02:55

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فاز المرشح الليبرالي خافيير ميلي في الانتخابات الرئاسية في الأرجنتين الأحد، وحقق فيها مفاجأة كبيرة بحصوله على 55,95% من الأصوات، وفق ما أظهرت نتائج جزئية رسمية.

وحصل منافسه وزير الاقتصاد سيرخيو ماسا على 44,04% بعد فرز 86% من الأصوات، وقد أقر بهزيمته قائلا إنه اتصل بميلي لتهنئته.

وقال ماسا: “واضح أن النتائج لم تكن ما أملنا به، وتحدثت مع خافيير ميلي لتهنئته، وأتمنى له التوفيق، لأنه الرئيس الذي انتخبته غالبية الأرجنتينيين للسنوات الأربع المقبلة”.

وتمنى الرئيس البرازيلي لويس ايناسيو لولا دا سيلفا النجاح للإدارة الأرجنتينية الجديدة، وذلك في رسالة على موقع “إكس” لم يذكر فيها الفائز في انتخابات الأحد. 

وكتب لولا: “أتمنى حظا سعيدا ونجاحا للحكومة الجديدة. الأرجنتين بلد عظيم يستحق كل احترامنا. البرازيل ستكون دائما حاضرة للعمل مع إخواننا الأرجنتينيين”.

صوت الأرجنتينيون الأحد في دورة ثانية من الانتخابات الرئاسية تنافس فيها الليبرالي ميلي والوسطي ماسا، وسط توترات نادرا ما عرفت البلاد لها مثيلا منذ عودة الحكم الديمقراطي قبل أربعين عاما.

وأغلقت مراكز الاقتراع الساعة السادسة مساء (21,00 توقيت غرينيتش) أمام 36 مليون ناخب.

وحدد التضخم وهو من أعلى المعدلات في العالم (143% خلال عام) والفقر الذي طال 40% من السكان رغم برامج الرعاية الاجتماعية، والديون المستعصية، وتراجع قيمة العملة، معالم دورة الاقتراع التي يأمل الأرجنتينيون بأن تخرجهم من الأزمة الاقتصادية.

وبدت خطط إنعاش ثالث أكبر اقتصاد في أمريكا اللاتينية متضاربة جدا.

فمن ناحية، ماسا (51 عاما) سياسي محنك تولى حقيبة الاقتصاد لمدة 16 شهرا في حكومة يسار الوسط التي نأى بنفسه عنها. وقد وعد بتشكيل “حكومة وحدة وطنية” وإصلاح اقتصادي تدريجي، مع الحفاظ على الرعاية الاجتماعية التي تعتبر أساسية في الأرجنتين.

أما ميلي (53 عاما)، فهو اقتصادي يصف نفسه بأنه “رأسمالي فوضوي”، وأثار الجدل في مداخلاته التلفزيونية، ودخل المعترك السياسي قبل عامين. وتعهد هذا الليبرالي التخلص من “الطبقة الطفيلية” و”تقليم الدولة المعادية” ودولرة الاقتصاد.

وأتى التنافس بين هذين المرشحين فيما ينتقل الأرجنتينيون “من أزمة إلى أخرى، وباتوا على شفير الانهيار النفسي”، وفق المحللة آنا إيباراغيري.

وتشهد البلاد ارتفاعا في الأسعار من شهر لآخر، وحتى من أسبوع لآخر، في حين انخفضت الأجور، بما في ذلك الحد الأدنى للرواتب، إلى 146 ألف بيزو (400 دولار).

ووصلت الإيجارات إلى مستويات باتت بعيدة عن متناول كثيرين، وتلجأ ربات الأسر إلى المقايضة للحصول على ما يحتجن إليه، على غرار ما حدث بعد الأزمة الاقتصادية الحادة عام 2001.

وأظهرت دراسة أجرتها جامعة بوينوس آيرس في وقت سابق هذا العام، أن 68% من الشباب الذين تتراوح أعمارهم بين 18 و29 عاما مستعدون للهجرة إذا سنحت لهم الفرصة.

“لم يعد الناس يتحملون”

وقالت الناخبة إيزابيلا فرنانديز (20 عاما) إنها مقتنعة و”بلا خوف” بـ”التغيير” مع ميلي، مضيفة: “هناك كثير من الغضب، ولا نرى كيف سيفعل ماسا الأمور بشكل مختلف، لأنه يحكم بالفعل”.

وقال الناخب أليخاندرو سيكو (62 عاما): “لم يعد الناس يتحملون. وأعتقد أن أزمة اقتصادية حادة تلوح في الأفق”.

وكان ماسا حقق تقدما في الدورة الأولى مع 37% من الأصوات، مقابل 30% لميلي.

ورغم حصوله على تأييد كثير من الناخبين “الغاضبين” في الدورة الأولى، لكن خطاب ميلي ورغبته في خفض الإنفاق العام في بلد يتلقى 51% من سكانه معونة اجتماعية، ونيته تسهيل شراء الأسلحة، أثارت المخاوف أيضا.

وخفف المرشح “المناهض للمؤسسة الحاكمة” من حدة خطابه بين الجولتين. وتوجه إلى الناخبين بالقول: “صوتوا بلا خوف، لأن الخوف يتسبب بالعجز، ويصب في مصلحة الوضع الراهن”.

 “الخوف يوحد”

ورأى أستاذ العلوم السياسية في جامعة سان مارتن غابريال فومارو، أن ما “يؤثر الآن هو الرفض (لمرشح أو آخر) أكثر من الدعم” لأحدهما.

واعتبرت المحللة السياسية بيلين أماديو أن “ما يوحدنا ليس الحب، بل الخوف”، في اقتباس منقول عن الكاتب الأرجنتيني الشهير خورخي لويس بورخيس.

وتتعرض البلاد لضغوط من أجل ضبط الإنفاق وسداد قرض بقيمة 44 مليار دولار حصلت عليه عام 2018 من صندوق النقد الدولي، بسبب التراجع الحاد في احتياطات النقد الأجنبي.

واعتبر ماريانو دلفينو (36 عاما) الأحد بعد أن صوت “بلا قناعة”، أنه “مهما حدث، لا نأمل بمستقبل جيد. نتوقع أن نتلقى ضربات”.

وما زاد توتر الوضع، تلميح معسكر ميلي في الأسابيع الأخيرة إلى محاولات تزوير، من دون تقديم شكوى رسمية.

ولقي ميلي ترحيبا في مركز الاقتراع، حيث هتف ناخبون “الحرية، الحرية”، مؤكدا أن معسكره “بخير، هادئ جدا، رغم حملة التخويف”.

فرانس24/ أ ف ب

Anti-establishment candidate Javier Milei faces Economy Minister Sergio Massa of the mainstream Peronist coalition.

Argentinians have cast their ballots and are bracing for the outcome of a nail-biter presidential election race between embattled Economy Minister Sergio Massa and the libertarian outsider Javier Milei amid a crippling economic crisis.

The two men competing on Sunday represent starkly different futures for Latin America’s third-largest economy, creaking under triple-digit inflation after decades of debt, financial mismanagement and currency volatility.

Polls show the candidates in a dead heat, with Milei holding such a slight advantage that no one wants to predict an outcome.

Polls closed at 6pm local time (21:00 GMT), with provisional results expected on Sunday evening, though the electoral commission has warned that “with a very close result” it could take up to five days for a final count.

Massa, 51, is a charismatic and seasoned politician seeking to convince Argentines to trust him despite his performance as economy minister, which has seen annual inflation hit 143 percent and record poverty levels.

His rival Milei is an anti-establishment outsider who has promised to halt Argentina’s unbridled spending, ditch the peso for the US dollar, and “dynamite” the central bank.

“One has to vote for the lesser evil,” Maria Paz Ventura, 26, told the AFP news agency.

“I think we are currently doing badly, so a change can’t be bad. You have to take a bet,” said the doctor, who cast her ballot for Milei in her scrubs.

Milei, a 53-year-old economist, is a political newcomer who stunned observers by surging to the front of the electoral race just months ago.

He showed up at the ballot box dressed in black and in a leather jacket, as dozens of police tried to wrangle a throng of supporters to the side.

Earlier he shared on social media a cartoon of himself carrying a chainsaw – a symbol of cuts he wants to make to spending – standing in front of former US president Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Milei, who has also raised the spectre of electoral fraud – which analysts say is one problem Argentina does not have – often draws comparisons with the two former leaders.

The economist’s screeds resonated widely with Argentines angered by their struggle to make ends meet.

Massa, who has sought to present himself as the calm, statesmanlike opposite of Milei, told voters “we are beginning a new stage of Argentina” after casting his ballot.

Milei tones down rhetoric

In a first-round election in October, Massa confounded the polls by coming first with almost 37 percent, while Milei scored about 30 percent of the vote.

Both have scrambled to shore up millions of votes from the three losing candidates.

Third-placed candidate Patricia Bullrich, from the powerful centre-right opposition, has thrown her weight behind Milei.

Milei has toned down his rhetoric to appeal to her more moderate voters, imploring the public not to give in to fear stoked by Massa’s campaign.

“If you are afraid you will be paralysed and… nothing will change. We are not going to privatize health and education. We are not going to allow the unrestricted carrying of guns,” he said.

He previously said he was going to ditch those ministries entirely and was in favour of making it easier to carry guns and even sell human organs.

Massa represents the Peronist coalition, a populist movement heavy on state intervention and welfare programmes that has dominated Argentinian politics for decades.

“I voted for Massa. The situation in the country is horrible, the economy is very bad. People want a change, but it would be a change for the worse with Milei,” said 16-year-old Trinidad Bazan, voting for the first time.

Massa has sought to distance himself from the deeply unpopular outgoing President Alberto Fernandez and his Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who was last year convicted of fraud. Both have vanished from the public eye.

As the war enters its 635th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, November 20, 2023.

Fighting

• The Ukrainian army said it has pushed Russian forces back as far as 8km (5 miles) from the banks of Dnipro river in the southern Kherson region. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the Dnipro for more than a year after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November. Ukraine said last week it had made a breakthrough. “Preliminary figures vary from 3 to 8 kilometres (2 to 5 miles), depending on the specifics, geography and landscape of the left bank,” army spokeswoman Natalia Gumenyuk told Ukrainian television when asked how much progress Kyiv had made. She added that there remained a “lot of work to do”.
• The United Kingdom’s defence ministry said that there were “few immediate prospects of major changes in the front line,” saying neither Russia nor Ukraine had made meaningful progress on the battlefield. In a statement, it said that intense fighting was concentrated near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, Avdiivka in the Dontesk region, and on the left bank of the Dnipro River.
• Russia launched several waves of drone attacks on Kyiv for the second successive night, triggering air raid warnings. Ukraine’s Air Force said its air defence systems destroyed 15 of the 20 Shahed kamikaze drones targeting the Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions. There were no initial reports of “critical damage” or casualties. On Saturday, Russian drone attacks caused power outages in more than 400 towns and villages in the south, southeast and north of Ukraine.
• Five people, including a three-year-old girl who was outside with her grandmother, were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. One person was killed by shelling in the northeastern Sumy region.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded swift changes in the operations of Ukraine’s military as he met Defence Minister Rustem Umerov. Zelenskyy said “priorities were set” noting there was “little time left to wait for results”. Zelenskyy said he had also replaced Major-General Tetiana Ostashchenko as commander of the Armed Forces Medical Forces, saying the armed forces needed a “fundamentally new level of medical support”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Bohdan Yermokhin, an orphaned Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving in March, has returned to Ukraine. Yermokhin, now 18, told the Reuters news agency his return was a “very pleasant gift”. Ukraine estimates about 20,000 children have been taken illegally by Russia. Zelenskyy welcomed Yermokhin’s return and thanked Ukrainian officials, international organisations, and particularly UNICEF, and authorities in Qatar for help in mediation.
• Zelenskyy imposed sanctions on 37 Russian groups and 108 people including two former Ukrainian top officials now in Russia for their alleged involvement “in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territory” and individuals who “in various ways help Russian terror against Ukraine”.
• Pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said he wanted to run for president. Also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, the former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer has repeatedly said Russia will face a revolution and even a civil war unless President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. Girkin helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine.

Milei, a self-described ‘anarcho-capitalist’, has promised to slash public spending by 15 percent and abolishing the central bank.

Argentina has elected libertarian outsider Javier Milei as its next president, taking a chance on the eccentric economist’s programme of radical economic reform after decades of stagnation.

Milei’s win on Sunday heralds a dramatic shake-up of the Latin American country’s economy and institutions amid public anger over high inflation and record poverty rates under the centre-left Peronist coalition.

In the capital Buenos Aires, hundreds of Milei supporters honked horns, set off fireworks, and chanted his popular refrain against the political elite – “out with all of them” – as rock music played.

Economic Minister Sergio Massa conceded defeat as provisional results showed Milei with 56 percent of the vote to his 44 percent, with nearly 90 percent of votes counted.

“Obviously the results are not what we had hoped for, and I have spoken to Javier Milei to congratulate him and wish him well, because he is the president that the majority of Argentines have elected for the next four years,” Massa said.

Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, has promised a series of radical reforms, including slashing public spending by 15 percent, abolishing the central bank and switching the Argentinian peso to the US dollar.

The 53-year-old political maverick, whose abrasive style has drawn comparisons with former US president Donald Trump, has also staked out conservative positions on social issues, opposing abortion and sex education, and railing against political correctness.

He has also questioned the death toll under Argentina’s dictatorship, attacked Pope Francis, and denied that humans are responsible for climate change.

Milei’s red-faced rants against the “thieving and corrupt political class” struck a chord with Argentines, particularly young men, amid rising poverty and triple-digit inflation in the Latin American country, which has stumbled from economic crisis to crisis for decades.

“I think what moved me the most was the simple way he explained concepts,” David Urbani, a 20-year-old economics student at the National University of Mar del Plata, told Al Jazeera ahead of the election. “The guy is an academic, not a politician.”

Milei will face a daunting set of challenges when he takes office on December 10, including government coffers that are in the red, a $44 bn debt programme with the International Monetary Fund, and inflation nearing 150 percent.

Australia have won the Cricket World Cup for a record-extending sixth time, ending India’s dominant run in its home tournament with a six-wicket victory in a low-scoring final on the back of Travis Head’s 137.

A heavily partisan crowd inside the 132,000-capacity Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India was silenced as Head, the player of the match, combined with Marnus Labuschagne (58 not out) in a 192-run partnership to chase down the target of 241.

“Not in a million years did I think that would happen,” Head said as his teammates celebrated their victory against an India side who had stormed into the final as the only unbeaten side of the tournament.

“What an amazing day. I’m just thrilled to be a part of it.”

The Indians, led by skipper Rohit Sharma, won all 10 of their matches before the final and were seeking a third trophy in their fourth appearance in a title match that brought a country of 1.4 billion people to a virtual standstill.

India, despite their vast riches, are without a global title since the 2013 Champions Trophy.

“Rohit Sharma was probably the unluckiest man in the world,” said Head.

Australia finished the 2023 tournament with a run of nine straight wins, after starting with back-to-back defeats to India and South Africa. India won the World Cup in 1983 and 2011. Its last major success was winning the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy in 2013.