EsadeGeo - EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 23/10/2023

The Guardian - Tom Phillips, Uki Goñi and Facundo Iglesia / Far-right populist Javier Milei fails to win first round of Argentina’s presidential election

 

• The eccentric far-right populist Javier Milei has failed to win the first round of Argentina’s presidential election, with the centrist finance minister Sergio Massa unexpectedly beating his radical challenger.
• Supporters of Milei, a potty-mouthed political outsider described as an Argentinian mashup of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, had hoped he was heading for a sensational outright victory similar to Bolsonaro’s shock triumph in Brazil in 2018.
• However, with 97% of votes counted on Sunday night, it was his Peronist rival Massa who won the day with 36.6% of the 26.3m votes cast. Milei – who has promised to abolish Argentina’s central bank and shun its biggest trade partners, China and Brazil – came second with 30%. The third main candidate, the conservative former security minister, Patricia Bullrich, finished third, with about 23.8%.
• Massa, 51, and Milei, 53, will now face off in a second round on 19 November. For an outright victory, a candidate would have needed more than 45% of votes or more than 40% with a more than 10-point lead over their closest rival.

Bloomberg - Ethan Bronner / US push for release of hostages delays Israeli ground war, but won’t stop it

• Israel supports diplomatic efforts to get Hamas to release hostages from Gaza quickly and in large numbers, a move that could delay and possibly alter its ground war, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
• The place of hostage releases in Israel’s military planning took on concrete meaning on Friday, when an American mother and her 19-year-old daughter from Chicago were set free through the mediation of Qatar. The US is pushing the wealthy Gulf state, which hosts some political leaders of Hamas, to do much more, the people said.
• Israel says there are 210 known hostages from many countries taken on Oct. 7, when Hamas operatives broke through the border fence into Israel in an attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. 
• In retaliation, Israel has been bombing Gaza for two weeks. The death toll from the air strikes has risen to more than 4,500, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza said Sunday.

• Related article: Washington Post - Hazem Balousha, Miriam Berger and Claire Parker / Gaza gets some aid — but no fuel — as power crisis upends lives

Politico - Hans Von der Burchard / Von der Leyen doubles down on pro-Israel stance, lashes out at Iran

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday reiterated her strongly pro-Israeli stance despite growing criticism from within her own staff, while also harshly criticizing Iran for seeking to sow “violence and chaos” in the Middle East.
• Some 800 EU staff took the unusual step of writing to von der Leyen at the end of last week to protest against what they see as unjustifiable bias toward Israel in the Israel-Hamas war. The protest came after the president neglected to mention the EU’s support for Palestinian statehood in a speech on Thursday in Washington — despite a two-state solution being a core part of the position of European countries.
• Yet on Sunday von der Leyen doubled down on her previous stance during a speech to the youth organization of her German center-right CDU/CSU political group.
• While she stressed that any Israeli defense against the Hamas terrorist group must be “in accordance with international law,” she again did not mention Palestinian statehood and instead just referred to necessary humanitarian aid, saying: “There is no contradiction in standing in solidarity with Israel and providing humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

South China Morning Post - Jevans Nyabiage / China’s belt and road pivots to ‘small yet smart’ projects with ‘modest’ US$107 billion financing pledge

• China has pledged 780 billion yuan (US$106.6 billion) in new financing for its Belt and Road Initiative – a modest figure compared to previous years, according to observers, but with the potential to deliver more bang for the buck as Beijing pivots its signature global infrastructure strategy towards “small yet smart” projects.
• At the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing last week, President Xi Jinping said China would allocate 350 billion yuan to the China Development Bank and a similar amount to the Export-Import Bank of China. The country will allocate an additional 80 billion yuan to the Silk Road Fund.
• He said the funds would support belt and road projects “on the basis of market and business operation”.
• Linda Calabrese, research ­fellow and development economist at the Overseas Development Institute in London, said the new financial commitments were modest compared with what was spent in the past and tallied with the narrative about “small but beautiful” or “small yet impactful” projects that had driven recent belt and road discussions.

Our opinion reads for today: 

• Project Syndicate - Jan-Werner Mueller / Mainstreaming the far-right
• Financial Times - Joe Leahy, James Kynge and Benjamin Parkin / Ten years of China’s Belt and Road: what has $1tn achieved?