The main managers of what happened last Sunday in the province of Buenos Aires were Javier and Karina Milei. We will never know how many of those who until mid -2023, had sympathized for together for the change but supported Milei in the ballot, opted to boycott the polls, but if the work of voting fed up with being treated with contempt for the president, the results of the elections for benches in very discredited legislative chambers would have been much less painful for the Milei and their friends.
Since assuming power, Milei has dedicated himself to collaring pretexts to repudiate him to those who supported him in the second round of the presidential elections only for understanding that it would be less bad than Sergio Massa. With foolish optimism, the Milei took them by converts to the libertarian cause that they would soon forget a variant of radicalism because, among other things, they valued their respect for republican norms. Although Mauricio Macri, Patricia Bullrich and other leaders of together for the change did not hesitate to surrender to the singing of Milea Milenas, many who had supported them before the ballot of less than two years ago resisted accompanying them.
Hallucinated by the abrupt fall of the inflation rate and the conviction that having enabled the feat thus supposed would be more than enough to guarantee years of popular support, the Milei brothers refused to pay attention to the difficulties caused by the adjustment that the government applied without palliative. They believed that everyone would understand that it was necessary and that therefore they would not have to explain anything. Milei did a lot to reorder the macroeconomics, but neglected everything else.
While the magnitude of the defeat of the Liberty candidates progresses even surprised the Peronist winners, beginning with the municipal mayors who managed to make the most of their territorial predominance, it was written that the Milei government would soon be punished by adolescent pride, not to say childish, which has been one of its most striking and more unfriendly characteristics.
Did Milei learn something useful of the less pleasant lesson you just received? Soon we will know the answer to this fundamental question, since it is at stake much more than the career of a specific politic Lisandro Catalán as Interior Minister.
However, to recover from the brutal coup that the Buenos Aires electorate dealt with, Milei could have to do without the political services of “The Chief” Karina and the members of the Clan Menem who were in charge of the ruinous strategy of humiliating their allies forcing them to paint violet. It would also be positive to distance yourself from the most sperm influencers that support it in “the cultural battle” that it is fighting and build a wide coalition cohesive by the will to replace a painful socioeconomic “model.”
Since the country cannot afford to experience another political seizure -the economic crisis is fictitious and overcome it will require years of very hard work -it would be convenient for Milei to return to zero pages and abandon the totalitarian fantasy of a monochrusted country that, it seems, Karina has sold. At most, he can aspire to the fact that freedom progresses to be erected for a while in the first minority, as is homeland in the province of Buenos Aires where, despite the help provided by the president and his adláteres, Peronism did not reach an absolute majority.
The same as the other democratic countries, Argentina is pluralistic and its rulers necessarily have to take into account the opinions and interests of others. If Milei refuses to do so, he will end up isolating himself to such an extent that, to survive in power, it will almost depend on the resistance of citizens to allow the order provided by the National Constitution to be violated.
Did you affect the results of the Buenos Aires elections the dissemination of strong rumors of corruption in the ruling nucleus? Although it would be paradoxical that they had a decisive impact, since among the most beneficiaries are members of the Peronist “caste” who are notorious for their rapacity, the complaints that have been formulated lately have contributed to deprive the libertarian dome of something very important that supposedly differentiated it from “the Kukas”.
If the idea is propagating that, in the background, Milei and company have much in common with the Kirchnerists, until their commitment to macroeconomic realism will be questioned. By its nature, corruption attempts against fiscal discipline by allowing “caste” to take over resources that could be used not only to help the most vulnerable sectors of society but also to invest in productive works. For the rest, there are so many entrepreneurs and others who have become accustomed to depending more on their relationship with the government on duty than on their own contributions to collective well -being, that it is not necessary to be an expert to understand that they are fully able to frustrate the reformist efforts of governments that feel constrained to give priority to the interested generosity of such friends.
For anyone’s strangeness, “the markets” reacted extremely negatively against the outcome of what the government itself decided to deal with as a plebiscite about its own management. Those who operate in them took him for evidence that, shortly, Argentina could be governed by “the Soviet” Axel Kiciloff, an ideologist anchored in the world of the middle of the last century that, many believe, would not hesitate a single minute in constitute everything within their reach and to repudiate the debts of the country by then to provoke the nth inflationary tsunami.
Such fears may be fantasy and that Kiciloff has learned something from his already very long experience in power, but in view of the record in that field of Argentina, the extreme skepticism that so many in Wall Street and other international financial places are logical in that risks of a relapse is logical. If they give for discounted that the most likely successor to the libertarian government of Milei’s self -destructive behavior would be a Peronist, they will have plenty Disconte of many, China is adopting attitudes towards serial offenders that are as severe as those that have always been typical of traditionally hostile countries to economic populism such as Germany and Japan.
Until very recently, Milei, as Macri at the time, tried to terrorize the electorate warning him that the most likely alternative to his own government would be one managed by Cristina, but it happens that, although the former president celebrated from her balcony the triumph of Patria Force, she herself occupied a place among the losers. As much as it hurts, Kiciloff is able to replace her as the nominal leader of Peronism. Will you know how to consolidate? It may not, but as long as someone appears with charisma, he will retain the role he achieved by ignoring Cristina’s advice and unfold the provincial elections. Although having a character as Kiciloff as the challenging number one should politically agree to Milei, what Cristina’s ex -favorite represents could even more scare power investors, whether they are national or foreign, than the spectrum of a hypothetical return of pure Kirchnerism.
Anyway, it is evident that a substantial part of the country’s population is concluding that the tax adjustment is causing a recession in which unemployment is rising, production is falling and the peso is losing value against the dollar. Does all this mean that Milei’s strategy is based on a wrong diagnosis? Not necessarily, since it was clearly suicidal to assume that inflation served to stimulate the economy and that therefore, public spending such as Massa had to be increased with its plans, but by celebrating the hardness of the adjustment, the government provides the impression of wanting to make retirees, the disabled and others that depend on the state, which does not help it do not help to come with the millions of voters that have been seen harmed. As irrational that is to blame Milei for the shortage of genuine resources, it is understandable that many do not attribute it to the lack of productivity of a broken economy but to the cruelty of a character that despises them.
