PT formalizes support for Lula’s friend running for president of Argentina

The Workers’ Party (PT) made official this Sunday (5) its support for Sergio Massa’s candidacy for the presidency of Argentina, through a statement published on the party’s website and signed by the party’s president, federal deputy Gleisi Hoffmann, and by Romanio Pereira, PT’s secretary of international relations.

Massa is the candidate of the current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and a friend of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), and will contest the second round of the country’s presidential election in 13 days against the economist Javier Milei, who has been advancing in the researches.

The PT note highlights that Argentina’s election represents “two social projects [que] they face each other: one, represented by the presidential candidacy of Sergio Massa, with a democratic and popular profile, with a government program of development and social justice; and another, from candidate Javier Milei, representing the extreme right and the ultra-economic neoliberalism of ‘save yourself if you can’” (see in full).

The PT states that Milei’s model is already known to Brazilians, as an “extreme right-wing alternative, which also governed our country in the previous period. We know all the pain and suffering that the disregard for the lives of the people meant for our country.”

The party’s statement contrasts with the silence that Lula has maintained regarding the Argentine presidential election, in which he avoids providing official support to Massa. Despite not making public statements about the dispute in the neighboring country, the PT member met with the candidate at the end of August in Brasília.

In the first round of the Argentine presidential election, Massa received the majority of votes, but polls indicate a tight race in the second round. Milei, an economist from the financial market, defends liberal economic proposals, such as the dollarization of the Argentine economy, reduction of public spending and taxes, and the country’s exit from Mercosur – which worries the Brazilian government.

More recently, the Brazilian government was accused by the opposition of trying to interfere in the election by announcing a US$600 million agreement with Argentina to finance exports to the neighboring country. Lula would also have worked behind the scenes to facilitate a US$1 billion loan from the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) to Argentina, which would help the country close a new operation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the alleged pressure was denied by Minister Simone Tebet, of Planning, who is also governor of the institution.

Massa’s campaign also has the presence of Brazilian political marketing professionals, who seek to characterize a possible Milei administration as a “save whoever can” scenario, similar to that used by the PT during the 2022 election between Lula and Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Brazilian marketers such as Raul Rabelo, Otávio Antunes and Halley Arrais are working in Massa’s campaign, seeking to win over Argentine voters with messages of self-esteem and national unity, in a political scenario that could be decisive for the future of Argentina and relations with Brazil.