Milei wins a third of votes as 65% oppose his plan to dollarize and close the central bank

Milei wins a third of votes while opposition sums 65%

A third of the votes. With this result, Javier Milei is in a position to challenge for the presidency of Argentina, confirming that his program—closing the central bank, intervening in the economy, abolishing the peso, and closing the gender agenda—has ceased to be a television gimmick. Opposing him, the block labeled in the debate as the socialist status quo gathers 65% of the ballots. The arithmetic does not allow for victory, but neither for forgetting. And the question hovering over everything is uncomfortable: what is voted when what stands in front has spent decades managing the disaster.

What Milei proposes: close the central bank and dollarize

The core of his economic program fits in two sentences: eliminate the central bank and replace the peso with the dollar. This is not a regional novelty. El Salvador, Ecuador, and Panama already operate as dollarized economies, and in El Salvador's case, dollarization predates Bukele: he did not change it, and the subsequent bitcoin experiment is not going well for now. Against the Argentine peso, the dollar or the euro are gold with inlays, summarizes one of the most cited interventions in the matter.

The problem is that dollarizing is not a switch. It involves renouncing monetary policy and tying oneself to what another institution decides. Some argue that Argentina has nothing left to lose in this regard because its currency has been destroying wages for years, while others respond that handing over the last lever of economic policy without sufficient reserves turns the adjustment into a free fall.

The law on detecting congenital heart disease that he rejected

One of the most repeated controversies is his response to a journalist regarding his vote against a law for the early detection of congenital heart disease. His defense, according to what is attributed to him, is that he will not support a law that mandates tests for all pregnant women in public hospitals: he wants them to be voluntary and finance the demand—that the patient chooses and not the provider—to avoid inflating politically controlled structures.

The data handled by his critics are these: the condition appears in 1 in every 400 fetuses and is serious in 20% of cases, which equals 1 in every 2,000. Against this argument clashes the radiography of the healthcare system described by some participants: gloves re-sterilized several times, operating rooms with peeling tiles, and hospitals that do not cover basic medication. The real discussion is not the law, but whether such a State can be obligated to do anything new.

How much liberal vote really weighs in Argentina

Here is the surprising figure. If from the 30% of votes obtained, a fifth end up accepting moderate liberal ideas, the ideological floor would pass from 3% to 6%: double in a single cycle, according to the calculation proposed by a participant. In Spain, the population with moderate liberal ideas does not reach 10%. That is, Milei can lose all parliamentary votes and still have moved the window of the sayable more than any institutional party in twenty years.

Convertibility, Menem, and the ghost of the nineties

The precedent weighs like a slab. Convertibility served to sustain a model of preferential relations with the United States that ended up exploding and left the country in the hands of the IMF, according to testimonies from those who claim to have lived that cycle. Hence the recurring antiestéticar: that the liberal adjustment becomes another tropical fantasy that explodes and leaves citizens paying the bill for half a century.

Some argue that the country is already on that floor, with 50% poverty and inflation above 100%, and that worsening is technically difficult. And those who respond that this same argument is what has allowed chaining government after government without changing anything.

The Spanish mirror: waiters earning 1,000 euros

The comparison with Spain appears again and again, almost always from bitterness. It is argued that liberalism destroyed what was inherited and left a country of waiters and engineers earning 1,000 euros a month, although from that same critique it is replied that precisely the countries now cited as examples—Korea, Japan, Singapore, Spain itself until 1978—industrialized protected before opening up. The conclusion drawn: free trade is embraced when you already have something to sell.

The question that no one closes remains. With a third of the votes, a program that breaks the monetary taboo, and an opposition that sums 65%, the result is not written. And the bill, whoever signs it, is paid the same.