No matter how republican almost all current political leaders claim to be, Argentina continues to be a country with a monarchical mentality in which those leaders who show weakness are treated as useless buffoons and those with strong appearance are idolized. Javier Milei understands this very well, who does not mind playing the role of maximum leader. Like the European kings of yesteryear – and, less explicitly, officials who swear on the Bible or other sacred text before beginning their official duties – the President attributes the eminent place he has reached to divine will. Likewise, in addition to wanting to give an extraterrestrial dimension to the political project that he has launched, he is fiercely committed to an ideology that admits no doubt, which helps him speak with a degree of security that is so overwhelming that it unsettles all his adversaries. .
The majority reaction to that speech with which he opened a new round of ordinary sessions of Congress, and in which he mercilessly criticized the majority of attendees for their alleged contribution to the country’s decline, served to confirm what everyone already knew. : Milei is by far the dominant figure on the national political scene, a leader who, to the surprise of those who do not like him, has enthusiastic admirers in many other parts of the world. Would Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Giorgia Meloni and other members of the international elite be willing to back it up with more than just encouraging words? Only if Milei manages to convince them that, once the adjustment is completed, Argentina will turn out to be an economic tiger capable of competing with any other country.
What accounts for Milei’s almost instantaneous transformation from a scandalous television commentator with strikingly eccentric personal habits and very unorthodox religious convictions into the most influential man in the country? Because he has managed to give the impression of being virtually the only political leader who has not only managed to diagnose very well the degenerative disease that Argentina has suffered for so many years and which still threatens to destroy it completely, but also knows how to cure it. For him, as painful as the very severe adjustment he has ordered is, it would be much worse for almost everyone if, for supposedly humanitarian reasons, the Government refused to drastically reduce public spending.
Although from Milei’s perspective the current situation in Argentina could hardly be more gloomy, his optimistic stance towards the possible future has allowed him to sketch a story in which, after being deceived by a long series of false prophets, the Argentine people have finally come to terms. awakened and, determined to overcome all the obstacles that its parasitic enemies have placed in its path, has already begun the march towards the land of promise.
Although Milei sometimes suggests that the journey would be so long that only the grandchildren of the still young will be able to enjoy what awaits them in the biblical “land of milk and honey,” the reality is that many other countries completed it in a relatively short period. Be that as it may, geopolitical, demographic, climatic and technological changes are occurring at such a disconcerting pace that no one, not even Milei in her prophetic avatar, is in a position to foresee what could happen in the coming decades.
Fortunately, the reforms proposed by the President are far from fanciful; In dozens of other countries, strategies similar to his have served to enable years of vigorous economic growth accompanied by social progress, while the schemes claimed by those who rage against him, accusing him of wanting to sacrifice the most vulnerable for the sake of theories capricious, they have only produced misery. In this context, what is happening in Cuba is instructive, where the communist dictatorship has been forced to apply another very harsh adjustment.
For Milei, the calamitous failure of other political leaders has been much more important than the help provided by those mythical “forces from heaven” to which he loves to allude. If those who preceded him in the Casa Rosada had governed better, Milei would never have been able to displace the Peronists and the people of Together for Change who, until the middle of last year, believed they were destined to alternate in power until the Greek calends. However, not wanting to put an end to the multitude of “jobs” with which the permanent members of what Milei insists on calling “the political caste” managed to supplement their confessable income, previous governments ended up limiting themselves to defending a inflationary and therefore unsustainable status quo. They administered a “rich country” that only existed in their imagination.
Needless to say, one of the favorite targets of Milei’s lapidary rhetoric was the Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof who, a couple of days later, responded with a diatribe even more furious than the one uttered by the president. Applauded by such prominent moral references as the Moyanos, Hugo Yasky and Roberto Baradel, Kiciloff fired a barrage of brutal disqualifications at him, treating him as a delusional criminal, a “flat earther” who is carrying out an “extravagant experiment” with “anachronistic recipes, esoteric or failed” that will culminate in “a social massacre.”
Thus, in Kicillof’s opinion, it is “anachronistic” to believe that fiscal balance is desirable and that it would be advisable to lose weight in a State that, thanks in part to its own efforts, has become so grossly obese that it has already crushed the productive country. He also forgets the governor that bluster like the one he just uttered has cost taxpayers many billions of dollars. Kicillof hopes to become the top leader of “the resistance” against the libertarian government project, which is a legitimate aspiration, but to guarantee the support of his Kirchnerist colleagues he is defending a model that has only generated poverty for a growing proportion of the population. inhabitants of the country, in addition, it goes without saying, of succulent benefits for a minority made up of unscrupulous opportunists.
Few days go by without modalities of illicit enrichment coming to light that until then had not attracted the attention of those outside the political world. The most recent have to do with the insurance regime of state entities, the new public universities and the opaque trust funds although, of course, there are many others. Needless to say, those who benefited from such “boxes,” which abound in the province of Kicillof, have had good reasons to trust in the solidarity of their fellow human beings who, with few exceptions, did not dream of denouncing what was happening under their noses.
The suspicion, justified or not, that members of almost all the parties were involved in corrupt schemes ensured that leaders accustomed to boasting about their own honesty feared that an exhaustive investigation would harm members of their own group, which is why they opted for the silence. It did not occur to them that, over time, hostility toward “the caste” as a whole would open the doors for someone presumably untainted by the corruption inherent in the system to break in.
As things stand, those concerned about what is happening have to choose between accepting Milei’s invitation to collaborate with her project and taking the risks that opposing her would entail. Although many, including Kicillof and his companions, would like to prolong the status quo for a few more years, the socioeconomic situation of a country in which there is no money is so bad – and there will not be any if the “old regime” manages to resurrect – that This is not a feasible alternative.
Milei wants to take advantage of his current ascendancy to call on the established political leaders, starting with the provincial governors who refuse to adapt to the harsh prevailing circumstances, to sign the “May Pact”, in capital letters, that he has devised, which would commit them to act within the framework of a purely capitalist order in which everyone would have to respect the financial rules that prevail in all developed countries.
It goes without saying that, for Trotskyists and those populists, like Kicillof, who have become accustomed to vindicating principles that leftists usually exalt, betting on liberal capitalism would mean abandoning the weakest on whose votes they depend to a miserable fate, but Judging by the experience of others – that of China, North America, the countries of Europe, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan – it is the only economic system that has shown itself capable of drastically reducing poverty to such a point that it only affects to a small minority who will depend for life on state subsidies. Be that as it may, Milei prays that, just like the “Moncloa Pacts” of 1977 that contributed so much to the modernization and rapid enrichment of Spain, a country that at that time had a per capita income lower than that of Argentina, that of Mayo have consequences that are equally positive.
