Mauricio Marci and Javier Milei recently returned to eat milanesas at Quinta de Olivos, after long months of coldness between them. The meeting, at the end of October, with the electoral result still fresh, was frustrating for the engineer. Milei offered him absolutely nothing – despite the fact that in the run-up to the elections there had been talk of greater coordination between La Libertad Avanza and the PRO – and seemed to take the victory as a blank check: he told Macri, as the visitor leaked to his collaborators, that the Argentines “had rewarded him” because “he had done everything well.” What type of negotiation or collaboration can be generated with someone who thinks like this?
The post-electoral empowerment of the libertarian leader meant a brake on Macri’s aspirations to get into the Government and fill boxes with names from his space: none of that happened or will happen. In fact, the appointment of Diego Santilli as Minister of the Interior was not something agreed upon with the former president either: “El Colo” was already more violet than yellow and that is why he landed in the Cabinet.
Macri was snubbed by the attitude of his partners, which is the same one they have had since the beginning: they thank him for his support, but they never give him anything in return. So now he plans to pay in kind. He has already warned that his deputies will continue to make money separately instead of forming an interbloc with the libertarians, so legislative support for Milei’s projects will have to be negotiated law by law, in a permanent tug-of-war. But the most important thing these days was another announcement, that the PRO will have its own presidential candidate in 2027. And the supposed alliance with the Government?
The news shocked the ruling party because the arithmetic indicates that, in this way, the right-wing vote would be divided in the next presidential elections, which would give Peronism a golden opportunity. The candidate that Macri puts up – perhaps himself? – will surely not win, but it would cause Milei to lose re-election. The final vendetta of the Calabrian for the slights received.
Macri believes that, even after the victory in the mid-term elections, Milei’s government will not end well. Privately he speculates that the economy will not take flight and that dollars, even after two loans like those from the IMF and the North American Treasury, will become scarce again. The model, he says, is not sustainable over time. And he had, in turn, the same storm captain when the currency runs that mortally wounded his presidency occurred: Luis “Toto” Caputo. To the engineer everything seems like déjà vu.
But what would happen in that scenario dreamed of by the vengeful former president? Would society, disenchanted by a new neoliberal experiment, automatically return to vote for Peronism? If the October elections served any purpose, it was to demonstrate that the issue is not so linear: even in the midst of the most brutal libertarian adjustment, voters turned their backs on the K and a former president who never ends retiring. On the other side, of course, there was only Milei. And that is what Macri wants to modify by 2027.
If his partner falls, he will be there to raise his hand and offer an alternative to those who do not want to surrender to Peronism.
