Like many others over the years, president-elect Javier Milei is convinced that Argentina lost its way towards the end of the 19th century, when a good part of the new ruling class that emerged to displace the old “oligarchy” turned its back. to “the ideas of freedom” that he says, based on controversial statistics, had made it “the richest country in the world” and therefore “the first world power.” He insists that “if we embrace these ideas,” Argentina will not take long to recover the place that, according to him, it occupied before “the impoverishing caste model” took hold.
Like Moses, the biblical figure he most admires, he believes he is summoned to lead the people to the promised land of which he dreams; he hopes to reach it within 35 years, not after the 40 that the leader of the Israelites spent searching for a way out of the desert.
Although the position taken by Milei is far from being ridiculous, since there is no doubt that the societies that have clung to the ideals that he passionately claims have prospered much more than the others, transforming into reality what for now is only A convincing theoretical proposal would not be entirely simple. In addition to requiring millions of people to abandon ways of thinking that seem natural to them, it would require that the many who have become accustomed to depending on the State almost instantly find new sources of income in a country where available resources have become extremely scarce. Whatever it may be, the emergency cannot be overcome overnight.
Is Milei in a position to lead the drastic cultural change he has in mind? Those who doubt this can point out that the resounding victory that was scored on Sunday was due less to his own merits than to the manifest deficiencies of his opponent, the Minister of Economy and de facto head of a government so unspeakably bad that its main representatives, Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were already trying to get away from the scene of the disaster in which they had been involved, and Sergio Massa himself has made it clear that he would also like to erase himself. Such an attitude can be understood; The three of them have managed to set up a time bomb that could explode at any moment. They fear being among his many victims.
Before launching their ambitious project, Milei and his companions will have to prevent a terribly precarious economy from completely collapsing. Unless libertarians and their allies manage to ensure a minimum of order in the second half of December, when they will be familiarizing themselves with the buttons of the decrepit state machinery with which they will have to work for a long time, their administration will be so brief that They will have no chance of beginning to implement the program of structural reforms that they believe are essential.
To resolve the many initial difficulties, libertarians will need the majority of the population to know very well the identity of those who have been the architects of the catastrophe that the country is experiencing, which, of course, will make a transition almost impossible. agreed because it is not in the interest of Massa and the Kirchnerists to collaborate with the incoming government. In fact, as soon as he recognized the defeat he had just suffered, Massa tried to warn him that “from tomorrow the responsibility and the task of providing certainty belongs to the new president.” As it could not be otherwise, Milei corrected him: he stressed that it is up to the current government to take charge of its responsibility “until the end of the mandate, December 10.”
Do the thousands of militants of La Cámpora and other Kirchnerist factions that occupy positions in the State and related organizations agree? Will they put their administrative, not to say patriotic, duties before their ideological preferences? It is unlikely; For many, a period of “resistance” has already begun in which they will do everything they can to ensure that their successors fail. The Peronists have always acted like this; When it comes to governing, they have never been known for their efficiency, but they are consummate experts in preventing others from doing so.
Unlike developed countries, Argentina does not have a professional and rigorously meritocratic “civil service” that seeks to be politically neutral. Here the public sector is one of the most desirable parts of the political loot, which is why it has acquired elephantine dimensions by accumulating layer after layer of gnocchi appointed by party operators, an abuse that has reached such an extreme that, as the adventures of “Chocolate” Rigau, there are many state employees who are forced to “donate” their salaries to their sponsors, settling at most for health insurance and pension contributions.
Milei began his adventure with nothing more than a set of economic ideas, some very good and others not so good, which he attributed to thinkers of the Austrian School, and the contempt he felt for a “political caste” in which parasitic opportunists abound, as well as a theatrically fiery personality. To the astonishment of many, the combination allowed him to soon become the most popular politician in the country. All in all, it is unlikely that he would have swept the elections without the determined support of former president Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich, who served to reassure those concerned about his possible extremism, and the wink of Juan Schiaretti from Córdoba, which helped him add the votes that allowed him not only to win but to do so by a much wider margin than anticipated.
Although many early libertarians feel offended by the Macristas entering their “space,” it would be advisable for them to recognize that they will not be able to govern without the support of many technical teams and a sufficient number of legislators willing to approve the measures they consider. urgent. If it were not for the presence at his side of Macri, Bullrich and other members of the Pro, in addition to the alleged good will of radicals like Alfredo Cornejo from Mendoza, it would not be easy for Milei to survive in power for long.
Once they have recovered from the emotional shock that the election results brought them, the Kirchnerists and their friends will try to take advantage of the enormous difficulties that they themselves have caused to corner Milei before subjecting him to a political trial. With the support of Peronist legislators from other factions and radicals who are dissatisfied with the strategy chosen by Macri, they would be in a position to do so.
Now, can a society that has long been accustomed to populist corporatism quickly change into one dominated by liberal ideology that privileges private initiatives over those promoted by the State? The examples provided by many European countries in the years following World War II when they rapidly “modernized” provide some optimism. Likewise, in Spain, Italy and, the country most mentioned by Milei, Ireland, a delayed political and economic rebirth was facilitated by the abrupt loss of influence of the Catholic Church due to priestly pedophilia, suggesting that collective ideological mutations of the type that is proposed to stimulate can occur.
Even more pertinent might be what happened in China following the devastation caused by raging militant Maoism; In a very short period, a notable proportion of China’s inhabitants enthusiastically adopted the liberal economic creed although, unfortunately, the communist regime prevented it from influencing political life. With nuances, something similar had happened before in Singapore, which is currently one of the richest and best managed states on the planet, one that, although it is a democracy, is considered relatively authoritarian by progressives who seek to measure respect for the citizen rights of people in different countries of the world.
Has the bulk of the country’s population become aware of what the enormous debacle that the Kirchnerist government has caused means to them, especially in the most recent phase in which Massa appropriated the national economy, using it to finance his electoral campaign in which, according to some, invested up to three percent of the gross product? With the purpose of sowing fear, the candidate minister distributed lists of the price increases and rates that people would have to pay if they opted for Milei; He gave up telling him what would happen if he himself won the presidency since, one way or another, there would be no way to prolong a miserable but better status quo much longer than what would come later. Massa knew very well that the “small money plan”, the “fair prices” plan and so on had an expiration date that, to no one’s surprise, would fall after election day, but for obvious reasons he refused to clarify it. . Well, Milei will be in charge of the adjustment “without gradualism”, that is, without anesthesia, that awaits us. It is a monumental challenge. If he manages to overcome it, the path to the promised land will be clear; Otherwise, the already secular decadence that has ruined so many personal projects will suddenly deepen.
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