Tension and mutual accusations of lying in the debate among the candidates for the vice presidency of Argentina

“Do you agree with the freedom of the genocidal?” Peronist Agustín Rossi asks the ultra candidate Victoria Villarruel, who avoids answering. “What Rossi tells you is a fantasy world,” says Villarruel

Agustín Rossi and Victoria Villarruel, running mates of Sergio Massa and Javier Milei, respectively.

EL PAÍS / BLOOMBERG

With ten days to go before the second round of Argentina’s presidential elections, the candidates for the vice presidency, the Peronist Agustín Rossi and the far-right Victoria Villarruel, held a tense televised debate. Both accused each other of lying repeatedly and looked for the weak points of their rival. Rossi emphasized the rupture of relations with Brazil and China defended by Javier Milei’s party as well as the promised cuts in public education and health and his vindication of the military dictatorship. The candidate for La Libertad Avanza (LLA) accused the Peronist of selling Argentines a fantasy world: “They had 4 years to change and they didn’t. What country are you offering us more than a simple lie.” Villarruel also listed the multiple corruption scandals that surround Kirchnerism.

The moments of greatest reliction were lived in the four minutes of free discussion that the two candidates had after each of the four topics addressed: economy and work; security and defense; health, education and social policies; and justice, human rights and transparency. In some sections, Rossi and Villarruel spoke on top of each other without listening to each other, while the moderators asked them to do their best to respect each other. Tired of the interruptions, Rossi accused Villarruel of “having, like Milei, quite a lot of violence in his discursive question,” while she replied that it was a debate: “If you want to make a monologue, go to the theater.”

The candidate of the official alliance Union for the Homeland (UxP) stressed that “it is a bad decision of Javier Milei to want to cut trade relations with Brazil and China,” because they are “two of the main commercial destinations” of Argentina. This Wednesday, Milei again insisted that he will not meet with the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “because he is communist and corrupt.” Villarruel removed iron from the matter and recalled that Kirchnerism has also favored some diplomatic ties and has relegated others by ideological affinity: “Don’t come and be Mother Teresa because you have fought with countless nations to align with Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

The current Chief of Staff defended the importance of free public education for the progress of Argentines and recalled that if they had had to pay for it, as Milei proposes, millions of Argentines would not have been able to pursue university studies, as was his case. He also criticized the attacks made by the LLA on the radical Raúl Alfonsín, the first president of Argentina after the return to democracy, in 1983. The far-right candidate accused him of having a hypocritical speech: “Rossi defends an education and health that they do not use. Every time they have a medical problem, they go to a private sanatorium.” He also denounced that the current government has done nothing against the insecurity suffered by Argentines: “They see you saying some very interesting figures, but in real life the one who is in the conurbation when the sunlight falls has to entrench himself in his house,” said Villarruel.

The candidate of La Libertad Avanza read part of her interventions, but she was especially solid when she spoke about the corruption scandals and the judicial cases open to Kirchnerism. Among them he cited the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, the bags with dollars that an exalted charge of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner threw at a convent, the vacation on a luxury yacht of the former head of Buenos Aires Cabinet and the illegal espionage scandal known this week. “Then tell us, Rossi, what it’s like to spy on judges,” he said, referring to the passage of the Peronist candidate through the Federal Intelligence Agency. The candidate used Milei’s campaign slogan to close many of her interventions: “Continuity or change.”

Rossi dedicated the human rights bloc to remembering the atrocities perpetrated by state terrorism between 1976 and 1983 and the consequences of that systematic plan that remain to this day, as is the case of those who still do not know where their missing relatives are or the babies that the repressors stole and gave to families who raised them under a false identity. “We are going to keep looking for them,” Rossi warned about the grandchildren who are looking for the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. “There were 30,000 missing detainees, stop vindicating the dictatorship,” he insisted. Villarruel, who reduces the systematic plan of State terrorism to “some excesses” of the military, denied it: “It was not 30,000, stop lying.”

At the time of questions and answers, the Peronist candidate reminded him that a photograph shows her participating in a march to demand the release of the military convicted of crimes against humanity. “Do you agree with the freedom of the genocides?” Rossi asked him. The far-right candidate avoided answering. “What I think is important is that we recognize that here there were victims of terrorism who do not have human rights,” he said in response, referring to the victims of the guerrillas that acted in Argentina during the seventies.

In the final minute, both summarized the proposal represented by their political spaces. The LLA candidate defined Massa as “the past marked by corruption, insecurity, lack of education, inflation.” In contrast, he assured that the formula headed by Milei is “the future of an Argentinian full of hope, with the police who protect, Justice without fear, the doctors who help alleviate the pain.” The candidate asked for the vote to “change Argentina forever.” For his part, Rossi assured that two models of society are at stake. “With Sergio Massa we invite you to live in a society that privileges family, health, education, work, a society without violence where none of your dreams has a price,” he concluded.

This Sunday it will be the turn of Massa and Milei. Both will star in the third and definitive presidential debate. It will be your last chance to face each other in front of the cameras before the call to the polls on November 19.