One day, in mid-2020, Karina Milei had a revelation: God told her that her brother had to get into politics since it had been prophesied that he would be President. When he became a deputy, a year later, he once again assured his brother that this was his path, despite the fact that the majority of his space wanted to go in search of the City in 2023. The night before the runoff with Sergio Massa he insisted on the same metaphysical line. “God already predicted your victory,” he told him. Now history repeats itself: in the days before the legislative elections, when pessimism dominated the mood in the Government, there was only one person close to the President who was confident that La Libertad Avanza was going to obtain a resounding victory.
Whether by a huge coincidence, by a finely calculated strategy or actually by the work of a divine plan, the truth is that events once again proved the youngest of the family right. This triumph, which she feels is her own, was the moment she had been waiting for in recent times. Now not even her brother will be able to stop her.
On the attack
Days before the elections, Mariano Cúneo Libarona wrote his resignation as Minister of Justice. Tired of the management, of the double command in his portfolio – where Santiago Caputo has empowered one of his soldiers, Sebastián Amerio -, wanting to go live abroad and with a warm ear to listen to his wife’s pleas, he made that resolution and even leaked it to the Clarín and Infobae media. The decision was well underway until the general secretary found out. Fearful that the absence of Cúneo Libarona would pave the way for the “Wizard of the Kremlin” man in that area, she asked the lawyer to hold out in her place for a while longer. Said and done: what Karina wants, Karina has.
Something very similar had happened some time ago. The day after the electoral defeat in Buenos Aires, in September, a large part of the ruling party wanted to see “Lule” Menem outside. The owner of the sister, detested to the core by caputism, had also been tarnished by allegations of corruption in the Disability area and everything indicated that he was going to leave his place. In fact, the request had come to the Legal and Technical Secretariat to formulate a letter of resignation, until that news reached the sister’s ears.
The two episodes show Karina’s growing power over the Government, a correlate of the emotional and spiritual monopoly she always had over her brother. In the run-up to the elections, his internal enemies clung to one hope: an electoral failure that would hit the person responsible for the armed forces, someone who had insisted on having libertarian candidates in the 24 provinces against the thesis of the presidential advisor who preferred to close alliances with like-minded governors.
In fact, in the run-up to the polls opening, Caputo and his people were in charge of letting half of the Argentine journalism know that the “Wizard” had everything ready to take control of the Chief of Staff, the Ministry of the Interior and some other places. Again the mirror: after the Buenos Aires elections, the advisor had made the same ball run about his much-announced “takeover.” On both occasions, these media operations had reached the ears of Karina Milei, who, every time she sees her enemy’s name written in the media, also sees the advisor’s own hand behind it.
Those who are soaked in that internal knowledge quickly understood what the first message of election Sunday was. In the afternoon, when the results were not yet known but rumors of a libertarian victory were already beginning to grow, the general secretary did something unprecedented: for the first time in her political history she decided to go out to speak to the press. It’s not that she hadn’t done it before, very sporadically, but whenever that happened she worked before her public appearance with her team, rehearsed the phrases, repeated them, prepared herself. What happened on election day was that “killer” instinct that runs in his blood: at the door of the Hotel Libertador, with Martín Menem at his side, he highlighted the work of both as “president and vice president of the party.” The message was transparent as water, an idea that in the following days she and her team would make known: the great architect of the triumph had been Karina.
Now the general secretary was encouraged to dream big. His own team is circulating the message that Manuel Adorni, Karina’s side, will be the next Chief of Staff. For now, Guillermo Francos (see box) resists in his position, but the sister’s insistence on that place puts everything in doubt, in addition to the lack of desire of the spokesperson for now to end up in the Buenos Aires Legislature. It would be quite a novelty if the general secretary did not keep something that she covets so much. He also activated another old desire of his team, especially “Lule” Menem: to attack Caputo’s boxes, starting with YPF, desired not only for its importance but for the access to friendly media that that box, the most important advertising channel, means. The SIDE, another area that Caputo controls, is also in the crosshairs
On the advisor’s side they prepare to fight. On the one hand, there was an entire operation to attribute the victory to “the forces of heaven”: that the electoral success was due to the contributions of the “Wizard” to the campaign, especially by the narrative that “the effort is worth it” that was seen in the president’s speeches and in different spots, and by the actions of the President, such as the one at the Movistar Arena. It is not the only line of combat. The other one they are preparing is to charge dearly for the “obligation” for Caputo to assume a position, something that the advisor resisted doing for almost two years, to the annoyance of a large part of the Cabinet who saw how he got involved in all areas without paying any legal costs as he did not have a signature. At the time of going to press, that coin was still up in the air, although the majority of the ruling party was beginning to take for granted that the “Wizard” will end up having some formal place.
As things stand, it is most likely that the hegemonic tie between the two sides will continue, with the difference that Karina will be even more empowered. The President, who often confuses bonds of affection with those friendships he never had, refuses to part with his “soul friend.”
There is equipment
On Sunday morning, “Lule” Menem’s account on X was activated for the second time. The first had been months ago, when he released a statement to distance himself from the bribery scandal. Now he was about to show his chest: “For the first time LLA presented itself as a national party in an election. That was possible due to the leadership of the president and the tireless work of the party president, Karina. Without that effort nothing would be possible.” The next day, Martín Menem did the same in an interview on La Nación +. When asked about the intern, he minimized his rivals and clarified: “We follow Karina’s path.” All the rivals of the “Muslims”, as they are called with contempt, see the same thing behind these messages: the intention to use the general secretary as a catapult. “They didn’t set up an official party, they set up a Menemist party. They respond to them, not to the Government,” says one of his rivals in the Chamber.
This is the thesis that the majority of the national candidates who headed the lists and who will now go to Congress were handpicked by the Menems. There, his rivals highlight the case of those chosen for Jujuy (Alfredo González), Catamarca (Adrián Brizuela), Formosa (Atilio Basualdo), Chaco (Juan Cruz Godoy), and Neuquén (Nadia Márquez), among others. Thanks to this push, Martín will be revalidated as president of the Chamber and “Lule” as national shipowner. The project is no secret there: in that family they dream of seeing Martín as governor of La Rioja, while, at present, they want to extend the influence of Deputies to the Senate.
The case with Sebastián Pareja is similar. The man, who sent his people to chant “for Pareja the leadership” in the victory bunker, imagines himself as governor of Buenos Aires in 2027. To support his claims he has around twenty Buenos Aires legislators – whom he personally selected for the closing of lists in the Province – and four national deputies – among whom is himself -, in addition to the position of president of LLA in Buenos Aires. What margin would Karina Milei have if she wanted to turn to another candidate? It is a problem at hand because Diego Santilli already expressed in public, after the elections, his intentions to go in search of that governorship. The fight between the two will only be a matter of time, as José Luis Espert, who had several run-ins in the past with Pareja in that same place, could well attest.
Furthermore, the Buenos Aires point guard goes through moments of ecstasy. On Tuesday the 28th he sent an “excited” audio to the 135 libertarian leaders in each Buenos Aires district – a barely subtle way of marking the territory -, at the same time that one of his men, the Morenense leader Ramón “El Nene” Vera, made sure that the entire ruling party found out about the trick that Pareja gave to Esteban Glavinich, known on the networks by his troll user @traductorteama. That was in a hotel in San Nicolás, after Milei’s tour in Rosario, a product of the leader’s anger with the tweeter, closer to caputism although on paper he is a free electron. According to Vera’s story, Pareja’s pineapple, who has accumulated many years of Peronism in the Conurbano, was remote-controlled and a knockout.
If it were another space, perhaps the news of the shipowners being so empowered would be good for whoever is supposed to control them. In this case, history indicates something else: when the youngest of the family broke up with Carlos Kikuchi, the national shipowner until the presidential victory, “El Chino” formed his own block in the Buenos Aires Legislature, first with nine deputies and three senators. Will history repeat itself? For now, what is advancing, at full speed, is Karina Milei.
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