After spending a year that was very boring for them because there were no elections in sight, when saying goodbye to 2024, political professionals felt revived. Although it will be months before the contests in which they want to participate enter their decisive phase, the fact that we are already in 2025 has given them a good excuse to subordinate everything to what they like most. Because theirs is a very competitive job, they are like those athletes who dream of winning medals in the Olympic Games or scoring goals in a World Cup; Many will already be thinking about the brilliant maneuvers that, they hope, will allow them to achieve unforeseen triumphs and thus climb some positions in the hierarchy of the faction in which they are active or, if they are lucky, in that of the national “caste”.
Unfortunately, serious debates between supporters of different government programs are unlikely. It may be that, in the long run, the clashes between theorists have a profound impact on the actions of governments, but the sad reality is that in the short term they do not serve to get many votes. It is for this reason that, both here and in the rest of the democratic world, today proselytizing campaigns tend to resemble advertising campaigns in that a catchy jingle or a seductive slogan will matter much more than the value of the product that a company is trying to sell. Needless to say, if a candidate is capable of projecting an attractive image, he or she will not have to worry about possible deficiencies in his or her specific proposals or about details such as the veracity of his or her statements.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that, for now at least, Javier Milei and his companions have an advantage. They give the impression of knowing very well what will have to be done for the country to leave behind an eternity of decadence. They are convinced that it would be foolish to refuse to support them. They are also favored by the results of the relentless fight against inflation that they have undertaken, so that, unlike the rulers of so many other countries, they are not yet harmed by the almost universal desire to replace those in power. by people who swear to be radically different.
In the opinion of the majority, “caste” still represents everything bad about a status quo that is difficult to bear and the chainsaw libertarians are the alternative. They remain outsiders, which, after a year or so in charge of the country, can be considered a notable feat, although one that owes as much to the lack of appeal of their most vehement Kirchnerist and union adversaries as to their own merits.
Milei wants people to take the election season as an opportunity to plebiscite not only the rather sloppy government he heads but also, what will be even more important, the “model” based on market freedom that he is rapidly building. You will know that the first stage, that of the financial reorganization that has not yet been completed, will be much easier than the next ones. It is one thing to stop the machine and eliminate the fiscal deficit, but it will be another to ensure that an adequate proportion of businessmen take due advantage of stability to produce more, export more and provide more employment to those who in many cases lack the necessary training. to make a positive contribution to a modernizing economy. For a while that could be very long, social peace will continue to depend on the goodness of the forces of heaven that gave the country a plethora of natural resources.
Unfortunately for Milei, and for the country, decades of facile populism have had a very negative impact on the available workforce which, like financial structures, will have to adjust to face circumstances beyond its control, which will pose a challenge enormous to the rickety educational system. It would seem that Milei and the members of his team underestimate the magnitude of the difficulties that will be caused by the socioeconomic and cultural gap that separates current Argentina from the developed world. It is as if they believed that, once the financial architecture has been rebuilt and countless bureaucratic obstacles have been dismantled, the freed human capital will soon lead a period of spectacular growth.
This is one reason why many who favor Milei’s course suspect that as long as he achieves his initial goals, he won’t be in a position to do much more. This is surely what Mauricio Macri and other Pro leaders think, such as former Economy Minister Hernán Lacunza, who understand that there are many problems, including those caused by educational deterioration, that do not lend themselves to simple economic solutions.
Likewise, the propensity of Milei and, even more, of his most combative collaborators, to express their contempt for the institutions that are typical of democracy and to treat with haughty disdain those who dare to minimally disagree with their ideology or criticize their attitudes, It raises fears that what they want is to domesticate the country to such an extent that the only authentic libertarians, not to say “anarcho-capitalists” allowed, are themselves.
In any case, the Milei government has managed to persuade approximately half of the population that, without iron fiscal rectitude, politicians will continue to limit themselves to managing misery for the benefit of “the caste”, but it runs the risk of wasting success. “cultural” that has been noted. From a short-term point of view, refusing to ally with those who share his convictions without being willing to kneel before his sister Karina and his guru Santiago Caputo could give him some advantages, but it would deprive him of the dimensions he will need to consolidate legislative and territorial hegemony. with which he dreams.
In politics, electoral systems matter a lot; The outlook for the government would be different if to become governor in the province of Buenos Aires, a candidate would need at least fifty percent of the votes; In that case, he would have reason to trust that, even if a Kirchnerist surpassed his rivals in the first round, he would lose in the second, as indeed happened in the 2023 national elections. Had he governed at the national level at that time In the Buenos Aires scheme, the President of the Republic would be Sergio Massa who, let us not forget, received a decidedly higher proportion of the votes cast than the British Labor Party which, last year, triumphed by an overwhelming margin. thanks to a system based on constituencies.
It is therefore understandable that Milei would want to eliminate the PASO, which stimulates the dispersion of the vote, while the PRO would prefer to keep them because it would provide him with an opportunity to remind libertarians that he continues to have the support of a significant social segment that, although He broadly shares the president’s economic philosophy; he does not approve of the quarrelsome and eschatological style that characterizes him. According to the most recent polls, Milei has retained the sympathy of approximately half of those consulted, but is not guaranteed the same proportion of the votes, which in his opinion is an anomaly that must be corrected. It is logical: popularity measured by pollsters can vanish from one day to the next, while votes have consequences that can last for many years.
In addition to trying to transform the level of approval he enjoys into something permanent, Milei aspires to do the same with the conspicuous role he is playing on the international stage as the most combative champion of fiscal severity and the Latin American friend of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, a disruptive duo that already has much of the planet in suspense. Although the tsunami of investments that he anticipates has not yet arrived, there are signs that the markets are finally beginning to show more interest in Argentina. By the way, Kristalina Georgieva’s words will not have harmed him; Recently, the head of the International Monetary Fund said that, thanks to the reform program she has implemented, Argentina has been “the most impressive case in recent history.”
By placing himself among the leaders of the “new right” in the battle he is waging against the “progressives” and “leftists” who have long dominated most developed countries and who therefore find themselves accused of being responsible for the many problems that afflict them, Milei has already obtained the verbal support of his alleged co-religionists. He hopes that they will soon come to the conclusion that it would be in their interest to support it with something more material, since in a way their own reputation is at stake and that of the cause, still somewhat diffuse, to which they should feel committed. Since they have astronomical amounts of money, what they consider to be coins would be more than enough to ensure that Argentina’s recovery turns out to be less arduous than it would be if the government were determined to row against the global current.
