The negotiation to obtain a favorable opinion to treat the Omnibus Law in the Chamber of Deputies It was furious. The message that the Government made public put pressure on it to leave as soon as possible, as they urgently need it to govern. But the president of the body, Martín Menem lowered the decibels before the legislators: “We are going to respect the times,” he told them.
In the midst of a Government that is intransigent, with a President who does not give in with his position even before an international summit, There are few who have a license to negotiate. One is Menem, in Congress; the other is Guillermo Francos, the Minister of the Interior, from the Casa Rosada and before the governors. Not much more. They are one of the few who dare to let their arm drop a little in the furious fight that Javier Milei started.
Pacts.
For Menem it is his first experience in the lower house, which is why everything costs him more, especially when, in the middle of the seduction operation against the deputies, he listened to Milei’s statements. “The slowness that the legislators put in the DNU debate is because they seek bribes,” the President publicly stated and generated offense from the opposition. And he added in an interview on LN+: “Those who like discussion so much, who argue to the point, are looking for bribes. This points against the corrupt, that dynamic to sell their votes. Be careful, there are a lot of people going around.” Menem felt like they were shooting themselves in the foot.
The radical Rodrigo de Loredo came to the crossroads: “Either you know facts that you are not denouncing, or you denounce facts that you do not know,” he responded. The topic remained floating in the air.
Anyway, Menem managed to seat a large part of the opposition, the most moderate, in his office. There they reviewed, one by one, the articles of the Omnibus Law, to know where they are closer and where there are greater differences to tweak the project, which was finally announced on Monday the 22nd. Legislators from the PRO, the UCR and We Make the Federal Coalition – from Pichetto, the Civic Coalition and others – set the tone, especially on the issue of delegations of powers to the Executive. Freedom Advances needs all of them for the law to prosper.
The other key figure for the negotiation is that of the Minister of the Interior. Francos is in charge of maintaining peace with the governors. He listens to the complaints, intercedes and does what he can in the face of the flood of complaints presented to him from the provinces. On Monday, for example, he had to organize a last-minute meeting with the leaders of Together for Change to contain them: they had exploded over the issue of Profits and withholdings.
The previous week, for example, he convinced a provincial leader to go see him at Casa Rosada to ask for help with his legislators. First he listened to his technical staff and minutes later the protagonist joined in: furious, he told him that he could not leave there without a response to his most important needs, that he should walk the meters that separate him from Milei’s office to solve it at that moment. . But The minister stopped him: “I’m not going to talk to the President for a few days,” he surprised him. He can lend an ear, accept that they are right in what they claim, but he knows that higher up there is an insurmountable wall called Milei and that things are done their way. He balances between the two positions.
In action.
Just as Menem’s office has the door open to sit down and try to seduce any deputy, Governors, mayors and legislators parade through Francos’ office. The historic leader told them which part of the Omnibus Law could not be modified and which could. Electoral reform, for example, was negotiable. “If the votes are not there, that is not going to hinder us from dealing with the law,” he confessed to his interlocutors. Finally, he was left outside.
When they present complaints about Milei’s statements against Congress, Francos gives a response that he has already rehearsed: “He is very vehement,” he says. And he exaggerates with a historical comparison: “Argentina had vehement presidents, like Sarmiento. “Sometimes you need to have that personality, no matter how annoying it is.”
Despite having Milei’s consent to negotiate, It is complicated for Menem and Francos when they have to raise claims. The mechanism is not oiled. On the one hand, they listen to how officials scold their interlocutors, which hinders agreements, and on the other They see how the President’s entourage closes the door when they talk to him about giving in.
In the middle of Milei’s trip to Davos, Santiago Caputo visited Menem’s office. He listened carefully to the conclusion reached by the president of the Chamber: to submit the law to debate in the chamber, chapters that the Government did not plan to retouch had to be modified. He did not go accordingly, although finally upon his return the President authorized some changes. Not enough. This is the difficult task of Milei’s negotiators: not only do they get angry with others, but also with their own.
