Peronists’ peril: Argentina’s elections

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economists. I'm Jason Palmer, back as your host. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The notion of assisted dying is controversial, even as laws expand to allow it all over the world. Our correspondent considers the new ethical battlegrounds. Who can choose to end their lives, why and when? And a century ago, before the motor car was ubiquitous, most commercial vehicles were electric. But of course, petrol power won out. New research looks into why loud, smelly cars became the standard that the world is only now driving away from. But first, Argentina's opposition had plenty to celebrate after midterm elections last night. Having handed the governing Peronist party a set of embarrassments, the Peronists lost control of the Senate for the first time in nearly four decades. At a post election rally, the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodriguez Lareta, thanked voters mentioning economic precarity and unemployment. Add to that the country's continued dance with the IMF over billions in debt and a messy pandemic response, and it's clear why he said voters wanted change. For his part, President Alberto Fernandez sounded a cooperative tone, calling for consensus and a shared agenda. Mr. Fernandez will have a hard job ahead to define and carry out that agenda now that his party is firmly on the back foot.

Well, in some ways, this election has been rather curious because it comes two months after primaries, which function as a kind of dry run for the election in which the opposition did very well.

Michael Reid writes about Latin America for the Economist.

The government did slightly less badly than everyone expected. And so President Alberto Fernandez presented this as a victory, which it wasn't. It was a defeat, but it was less crushing than people expected.

So what kind of defeat are we talking about here?

The election was for almost half of the lower house of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, and for a third of the Senate. The ruling peronists lost their majority in the Senate for the first time since 1983, though they remain the largest party. But that means they no longer control the agenda. They clung on in the Chamber of Deputies and have two more seats than the main opposition coalition. And they're the largest force, but they don't have a majority. One of the main kind of dimensions of this election is the internal fight within the governing coalition between President Alberto Fernandez, who is more moderate, and his vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who is no relation, a former president, leftist populist. Her political base is in the province of Buenos Aires. There's a large area, including the poorer parts of the capital. And there, there the Perennis lost by only a point and a half. So she claims that as a victory.

And so perhaps not as bad as expected, but still that the government did badly. Why do you think that is? What were voters voting on here?

Well, I think there were two sets of reasons. One is the handling of the pandemic. President Fernandez imposed very strict, very long lockdown, which didn't work to prevent contagions and deaths being broadly similar to elsewhere in South America. And he himself violated that lockdown. It emerged in order to hold a party for his wife, and people were infuriated by that. And secondly, the other big set of issues involves the economy. The government has struggled really to do anything on the economy. It failed to reach an agreement with the IMF. Inflation is running at over 50% a year. Although the economy is bouncing back from last year's deep pandemic recession, it's still smaller than it was before the pandemic. And more than 40% of Argentines are officially classed as living in poverty and unemployment is high. So all of that makes people very discontented.

And how has President Fernandez responded to this loss?

Well, it was interesting that last night he announced that his government would send next month to the Congress a multi year economic plan. Now, that is something the IMF has been asking for for two years and which previously President Fernandez said wasn't necessary. So that's a hint that the government try and reach an agreement with the imf. It will be a kind of minimum kind of agreement in order to get the money to be able to repay the $17 billion in debt to the fund itself that comes due next year. It will be difficult for the government to get it through because of the possible opposition of Vice President Fernandez Zacirchener, but it suggests that the President thinks that the way forward is a certain amount of moderation and an attempt to reach some kind of agreement with the opposition as well as with the IMF in order to keep the show on the road for the next two years.

And what about the opposition? What have they said?

Well, they are presenting this rightly as a victory. The next question will be who will be the opposition candidate in the presidential election in two years time. I think the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodriguez La Reta, is probably the best place and I think he will be fairly pleased with the election. The opposition coalition did very well in the city of Buenos Aires. Mr. Rodriguez certainly was upbeat on election night, saying we have a huge opportunity and let's look forward.

And so very plausible competition then from the opposition when it comes to that presidential election. Do you think President Fernandez can turn things around in the meantime?

Well, it's going to be very hard. I think the opposition is well placed to win the next election. But Argentina and the government have to get through the next two years and that's not going to be easy because the government is using price controls on 1400 items. It uses exchange controls to try and keep inflation down and to prevent the peso from depreciating. But the peso on the black market, the tolerated black market, is double the the official rate. The government finances its deficit by printing money. Unless there's a deal with the imf, it has no chance of international credit. So I think it's hard to see any great renaissance in Argentina without a different government. I think this is about muddling through and holding things together. The government has the advantage that the Peronists essentially control the street, and in particular Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner controls the street in Buenos Aires. So through this mixture of controls of all kinds, I think they can muddle through, but things will be hard.

Michael, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much.

For more analysis like this from our international network of correspondence, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show notes. 30 years ago, the only country where assisted dying was legal was Switzerland. Since then, the decline of religious opposition and the rise of more individual liberal values have solidified support for the practice. Over time, that support has been reflected in changing laws. Assisted dying is now legal or decriminalized in at least a dozen countries, with legislation and court challenges pending in many others.

So after years of struggle, activists and politicians have found ways through or around reluctant legislators.

Giorgio Banjo writes about foreign affairs for the Economist.

The right to die has come into effect in many different ways. So it's been voted through by American citizens, it's been passed through Australian legislatures, and it's been pushed through Canadian and European courts. The people who support it have found very innovative ways to do this. They've rallied public support around it and they've organised very powerful campaigns to show the extent of popular support for this issue.

So is that to say that assisted dying is now more common than it was?

So I think it's really important to say that assisted dying is still very unusual. Most people who have an assisted death, they do so because they've got terminal cancer, and the number of people that are dying in this way is still very small. There's also very strict rules in place to limit who can access assisted dying. And this is done to protect the most vulnerable in society, who may, some people fear, end up using it without really wanting to. But despite this, I think it is certainly true to say that these laws are changing the way that people think about dying. In some countries, assisted dying has been extended to people with mental health problems and even to people with advanced dementia. In other countries, there are very advanced discussions around whether older people who are tired of life should be able to access assisted dying. In countries like Belgium, Colombia and the Netherlands, governments there have broadened assisted dying laws to include terminally ill children.

And this has always been a controversial topic. How has the debate developed as these laws have proliferated?

Clearly, assisted dying is an incredibly sensitive topic for many people and prompts fierce debate wherever it's enacted. An interesting example is Canada, where medical assistance in dying, or maid, has recently become available to all citizens who suffer from a chronic physical illness or disability. And what's unique about Canada is the law allows for individuals to determine what constitutes their unbearable suffering. And so this opens the door to a wide range of interpretations about who should qualify for maid. Some opponents of assisted dying, particularly people who represent disabled people, say that the law devalues the lives of disabled people and they worry that people may not get enough support in society already and that in this way, MAID might be an easy way out for them. The worry here is that Canada may be helping people to die before it has helped people to live. Supporters of assisted dying say that it's people's fundamental human rights to determine when they should get to end their lives, if they are suffering unbearably, and that they should not be held hostage to the failures of society. These discussions are already very heated, but they will only increase more in 2023, when MAID is extended to people who have mental disorders.

And what happens then?

So, currently, people who suffer from mental illnesses can still qualify for maid as long as they have another physical condition which also contributes to their suffering. But in 2023, people who solely have a mental illness will be able to apply for maid. Proponents of this would argue that people who suffer from severe mental illness suffer in ways which most of us cannot imagine. But for most people, this is quite a troubling development, because sometimes suicidal urges are a symptom of psychiatric disorders. And there's a concern about how a doctor or an assessor might be able to distinguish between these impulsive suicidal thoughts and a more sustained wish to die, particularly when mental health provision is often very patchy and support for people with mental illnesses is often lacking.

And you've mentioned that other countries are changing their laws too. How have the discussions gone elsewhere?

In other countries, the debate is a bit different. So in the Netherlands, there are some supporters of assisted dying that want to expand eligibility to over 75s who feel they've lived a completed life. This is controversial. It's currently stored for political reasons. But it's prompted these broader discussions about who should be able to qualify for assisted dying and where assisted dying is heading. In the Netherlands, 1 in 25 deaths is an assisted death. But in some cities, that number can be as high as 1 in 7. And some people think that this is evidence that the Netherlands has gone from allowing euthanasia as a last resort to prevent a terrible death to becoming a way to cut short a terrible life.

So with all of these laws around assisted dying changing so rapidly, where do you see all this going?

Increasingly, we're hearing lots of people talking about their desire to have a good death, their desire to control their death, even schedule it, and to use it as a way to bypass some of the unpleasant effects of aging or the agonizing experience of suffering. I spoke to one doctor, Ellen Wiebe in Canada, who told me that she'd helped people to die on a beach, at sunset, in a forest, and in the middle of a party, surrounded by their friends. So I think that it is possible to imagine a future where death becomes another event to share with your close friends and to craft in a way that you would like to do so.

Georgia, thanks very much for your time.

Thanks, Jason.

Electric vehicles are seen these days as the future of motoring. Sales are booming, prices are falling. Options are proliferating as a major contributor to global carbon emissions. The internal combustion engine is slowly on the way out. But this isn't the first time that EVs have battled petrol power in the marketplace.

Surprisingly, back in 1905, when cars were in their early stages of development in America, most of the commercial vehicles were electric.

Dolly Seton is a data journalist at the Economist.

But by the 1920s, electric vehicles were a dying breed. And that's a trend that's continued until fairly recently.

Well, with modern eyes, that seems like a real missed opportunity. I mean, why didn't EVs catch on back then?

Well, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the motor car had not been standardized, and they were actually very loud, the gas was smelly, and every time you stopped the car, you had to get out and hand crank the engine to start it again. In the meantime, the electric vehicles were clean and easy to use. The electric Columbia motor carriage was a must have car in 1897. And some of New York's first taxis were called Electrobats and named for their power source. Standardization didn't really take off until Henry Ford's Model T, which was released in 1908. And that model T Ford is thought of as the first incarnation of today's internal combustion petrol cars. Most people attribute electric vehicles demise to drivers being put off by their limited range and higher cost relative to petrol powered cars. But new research by economic historians Joseph Talby and Hannah Nielsen of Lund University in Sweden argues that that wasn't actually the main disadvantage of electric vehicles.

So what conclusion did the researchers come to then?

Well, they analyzed the specs and production sites of 37,000 model year pairs of American cars in 1895-1942. And although the petrol powered cars were the most common, their market share varied by location. So in places where the infrastructure electric vehicles needed, like smooth roads, which reduced jostling of heavy batteries and ample electricity, the production of the electric vehicles was unusually common. But in areas without such capacity, like areas without good roads, petrol predominated. Petrol vehicles infrastructure needs were largely met before they were invented because many rural stores already stocked the fuel for farm equipment.

And you say that range and cost weren't such an issue?

Well, the authors considered various causes of petrol's triumph. It turns out that cost is Unlikely, since until 1910, petrol powered cars and electric vehicles of the same model type were similarly priced. And as far as range, electric vehicles managed a respectable 90 miles, or 145 kilometers by the 1910s. And if range had been electric vehicles principal handicap, then battery swapping stations where you could replace depleted batteries with charged ones in seconds could have been as common as petrol stations did. And those had already been set up for the electrobats.

So what if the infrastructure in America had been more amenable to electric vehicles? How might things have been different?

Well, this is another thing that the researchers studied. They found that if the amount of electricity America produced by 1922 had been available in 1902, over 70% of car models in 1920 would have been electric, although long distance motorists would still have chosen the petrol cars. So if you account for the extra power generation that such a fleet would need, this would cut America's carbon dioxide emissions from cars in 1920 by 44% and that's a benefit that would have accumulated over the years and it probably would have influenced the industry in other countries.

Thanks very much for joining us, Dolly.

Oh, thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review and see you back here tomorrow. Sam.