Argentina has always stood out for its ability to create sui generis political movements that motivate perplexity in other parts of the world. Borders outside, a century ago nobody understood very well what Yrigoyenismo was, while Peronism and its Kirchner excretion that happened to be confused to those who would like to locate them in the conventional ideological maps.
The same can be said of mileism. Is it liberal, libertarian, right -wing, populist, autocratic, messianic or something so unusual that it is useless to try to define it? To top it off, a few days pass without the leaders of the force that has been agglutinated around Javier Milei to manage to disorient even more interested in national vicissitudes.
Milei and those who would join their flag reached power by promising ending the supremacy of a parasitic and inept political caste, that is, to the ruling class that in the opinion of the majority had been responsible for the nothing good condition in which the country was after two decades of Kirchnerism. However, because they were the libertarians of the same society, it soon became clear that they had much in common with the characters that were claimed to expel from public life, hence the persistent doubts about their willingness to really take the contribution of corruption to the current state of the country.
Did Milei collaborate with the Kirchnerists to stop the law of clean file that, minutes before voting the senators, seemed to be approved, which would have been lousy news not only for Cristina Kirchner but also for all the accustomed to monetizing political power? They say that the strong missionary man, Carlos Rovira, ordered two senators who respond, Carlos Arce and Sonia Rojas Decut, oppose him because Milei had asked for it, an accusation that the libertarian denies with the vehemence that is usual. According to Milei, the culprit of sinking the bill was Mauricio Macri who, with the purpose of hurting the government and helping Silvia Lospenno in the Buenos Aires legislative election, made “an arrangement” with Cristina.
While virtually no one believes that macristas have allied with Kirchnerists to harass the libertarian government, which Milei would like to think that they would be able to do it does not lack logic. From his point of view and, what is even more important, that of his sister Karina, “the boss”, phagocytizing the PRO is a priority because they want to appear as the exclusive owners of the economic policy that is underway. For more signs, Milei should be forgotten that citizens forget the differences between the various political groups that dominated the stage before the loud arrival of the Savior. They will also know that Macri and his supporters are the only ones who are in a position to take advantage of the antipathy that in increasingly broad circles is causing the extraordinary verbal rudeness of a president who seems unable to support any manifestation of dissent.
Those surrounding Milei believe they have insured most of the votes that, until a couple of years ago, went to Pro, but suspect that they would not be enough to guarantee the prolonged reign with which they dream. They give a discounted that, to consolidate in power, they would have to incorporate into their movement a substantial part of the Peronist electorate, starting with that of Buenos Aires. Even if there is no formal pact with Cristina -in the opinion of libertarian strategists, the doctor belongs to yesterday and therefore could not cause annoying difficulties -, because of their behavior and way of expressing themselves they are telling those who continue to support it that they are not as oblivious as the elitists, middle and high class, who trust Macri.
Bad that many weigh, the strategy that Mileists have chosen makes sense; Both here and in many other countries, the votes that come from sectors formed mostly by people little accustomed to reading books can be decisive, which is why proselytizing campaigns based on symbols -motens, lions, allusions to celestial forces, in addition to a strong dose of anti-intellectualism-, will be more effective than traditional in need.
By whistling macrismo and, for similar reasons, to critical journalism supposedly “elitist”, Milei and their soldiers hope to meet with the many who feel victims of social prejudices. They aspire to mobilize resentment. It is what in the United States they have done, with striking success, Donald Trump and his supporters who are freeing a ruthless cultural war against those “progressive” who abandoned their alleged solidarity with workers for a long time to embrace novel causes “Wake”. While the economic ideology that, inspired by the works of Austrian thinkers, has elaborated, is radically different from the improvised one by the seller of American real estate properties, the political strategy that has made its own is virtually identical.
Anyway, the one that there are so many explicit kleptocrats in the Senate that the destination of the clean date project depended on two missionary representatives, tells us a lot about the moral principles sustained by a very important political sector. Many senators really believe that, for their services to the homeland and Peronism, Cristina and her partners had full right to pocket thousands of dollars of the public treasury and that it is aberrant to assume that they deserve to be punished as if they were common citizens. For them, personal loyalty is the only thing that counts.
It is an attitude that, taken to the extreme, is incompatible not only with democracy but also with economic development, since in systemically corrupt societies, rulers feel obliged to privilege their own material interests and those of their relatives and friends above all others. It does not strange, then, that in economic terms Kirchnerate turns out to be a catastrophe for Argentina.
Milei seems to believe that corruption is typical of statism and therefore the best way to combat it will consist of reducing the size of the public sector and thus depriving venal politicians of opportunities to profit from taxpayers’ ribs. The libertarian will not be mistaken, but when implying that in his opinion it is a structural problem that will be automatically solved with more privatizations and the elimination of bureaucratic rules that take advantage of unscrupulous characters, it provides the impression of wanting to allow the “jets”, beginning with Cristina, to which they sporadically denounce, conserve the loot that they have already accumulated. It also provides matter to those convinced that, deep down, Milei are as corrupt as the life members of “permanent political” and that the $ pound is attributable to their alleged ignorance of how things work in the mysterious world of cryptocurrencies.
Even if only for electoral reasons, Milei cannot afford to see corruption that, according to opinion polls, is a topic that worries most. To defend against attempts to dismantle the pro, macristas have put themselves to attack it for their apparent will to reach a truce, tacit or not, with Cristina. Recently, former President Macri said that, in the year and a half of libertarian government, Argentina did not upload a single place in the international transparency ranking, unlike what happened when Cambiemos was in power and the country climbed from the number 107 to 66.
While freedom progresses has not yet acquired the reputation of being an intrinsically corrupt party, if Milei and its militants continue to give those who take the most pretexts civism to vote against them, the ruling may not reach the dimensions that it would need to carry out the drastic transformations that have been proposed.
For relief of the many politicians who, as athletes on the eve of a championship, feel revitalized by electoral tournaments, those of this year have already begun. The consensus is that, until now, the results have been very bad for the Peronists who are losing land in the “feudal” provinces that for a long time dominated, depressing for macristas and acceptable for the mileists since, when allying with representatives of the local caste, Freedom advances is erected in a promising alternative. However, since almost half of the electorate remained away from the dark rooms, it would seem that no political force managed to excite the Salteños, Chaqueños, Jujeños or Puntanos. The same is about to happen in the Federal Capital, where there is an overabundance of lists but none can expect to approach an absolute majority, which is why the battle for the interpretation of the results will be so fierce, and as misleading, as the campaigns of the various contestants have been.
