In recent days, a phrase from Mauricio Macri emerged that overwhelmed the Government’s patience. In a report, the engineer criticized Javier Milei’s alliance with the United States and Donald Trump. He said: “China is more complementary than the United States to Argentina.” Of course, the old business dealings of Franco, the deceased patriarch of the clan, with the Asian giant are still engraved in Macrista’s DNA.
But the relationship with the Government was already strained after the elections, when Macri said that the PRO would have its own candidate in 2027, which would divide the right-wing vote and could give Peronism a chance. It would be the Calabrian’s vendetta after Milei’s snubs: to frustrate his re-election.
It is already known that Macri and Milei went back to eating Milanese after the elections at Quinta de Olivos, after long months of coldness between them. The meeting, at the end of October, with the electoral result still fresh, was frustrating for the engineer. Milei offered him absolutely nothing – despite the fact that in the run-up to the elections there had been talk of greater coordination between La Libertad Avanza and the PRO – and seemed to take the victory as a blank check: he told Macri, as the visitor leaked to his collaborators, that the Argentines “had rewarded him” because “he had done everything well.”
The post-electoral empowerment of the libertarian leader meant a brake on Macri’s aspirations to get into the Government and fill boxes with names from his space: none of that happened or will happen. In fact, the appointment of Diego Santilli as Minister of the Interior was not something agreed upon with the former president either: “El Colo” was already more violet than yellow and that is why he landed in the Cabinet.
Macri was snubbed by the attitude of his partners, which is the same one they have had since the beginning: they thank him for his support, but they never give him anything in return. So now he plans to pay in kind. He has already warned that his deputies will continue to make money separately instead of forming an interbloc with the libertarians, so legislative support for Milei’s projects will have to be negotiated law by law, in a permanent tug-of-war. But the most important thing these days was another announcement, that the PRO will have its own presidential candidate in 2027. And the supposed alliance with the Government?
The news shocked the ruling party because the arithmetic indicates that, in this way, the right-wing vote would be divided in the next presidential elections. The candidate that Macri puts up – perhaps himself? – will surely not win, but it would cause Milei to lose re-election.
Macri believes that, even after the victory in the mid-term elections, Milei’s government will not end well. Privately he speculates that the economy will not take flight and that dollars, even after two loans like those from the IMF and the North American Treasury, will become scarce again. The model, he says, is not sustainable over time. And he had, in turn, the same storm captain when the currency runs that mortally wounded his presidency occurred: Luis “Toto” Caputo. To the engineer everything seems like déjà vu.
