The power of Javier Milei relies on three pillars: the impression that he is radically oblivious to “the caste” that, in the opinion of a good part of the citizen viable
Thus, Milei cannot afford to star in more scandals, such as the “cryptogate”, who doubt not only their personal honesty and that of members of their surroundings, starting with his sister Karina and his guru, Santiago Caputo, but also his skills as an economist. If the idea that the president has become one more politician and that, despite his commitment to fiscal rigor, is as prone as any other economist to make serious mistakes, the very positive image that has been managed to elaborate and that, it seems, excites an nothing negligible proportion of the national electorate, will not take long to blur.
Milei and, even more, the other members of the “iron triangle” governing, have hegemonic dreams. They hope to get strengthened from the electoral season that is approaching quickly and that already monopolizes the attention of the members of the national political class. Although everything may happen as libertarian strategists foresee, they should remember that, in 2017, Mauricio Macri could also celebrate the results of the legislative elections of mid -term in which together for the change razed, only to see the power thus accumulated disintegrate shortly after in the middle of a sharp exchange crisis that was aggravated by the turbulence of international markets.
Could something similar happen to Milei? The extreme nervousness that produces any allusion to the exchange rate suggests that it is well aware of the risk; He fears that an eventual devaluation unleashed a furious exchange rate that would have economic and political consequences as negative as the one in 2018 sank the Macri government.
In view of what is happening in other parts of the world, Milei has good reasons to worry. The tariff war against the rest of the planet that is fighting its idol Donald Trump has already negatively impacted on the economy. If the escape is intensified towards the security that has been launched, few investors will want to try their luck in a country as unreliable as Argentina, which is why it tends to upload the country risk index since Wall Street suffers one of its spasmodic lows.
Although Trump is an important ally for Milei that, in addition to filling him with compliments, has helped him reach a satisfactory agreement with the IMF, he is creating an environment that is far from favoring it. The places where people attribute local economic difficulties to what is happening in international markets are scarce; Like Macri, Domingo Cavallo and others will remember, here, as in many other countries, opposition politicians do not usually hesitate to take advantage of the setbacks caused by foreign problems to discredit governments that, until then, they had enjoyed popular approval.
Be that as it may, Milei continues to benefit from the inability to build a convincing alternative of the many politicians who have plenty of reasons to feel annoying for their neighborhood behavior. Why? In the case of the Kirchnerists and other Peronists, to the calamitic failure of the corporate populist model that impoverished the country and that, thanks to the atrocious inheritance of unpaid debts that he left behind, he continues to hinder his recovery. In that of others, starting with the macristas, to the feeling that they lack the mood fortress they would need to prevent Argentina from recaying in the vices that led it to the edge of self -destruction. While it would seem that Macri himself has understood it and that, if he had a second chance, he would be willing to administer the economy with mileista severity, he has not been given reconcile with the many who have never wanted it for reasons that are more personal than political.
However, for libertarians, macrismo remains a rival of Fuste who, to ensure their own predominance, will have to bend. They are not worried that the most benefited by the offensive that Milei has undertaken against the former president who still aspires to be his main ally are the adversaries, not to say enemies, of both. However, both in the city of Buenos Aires and in the homonymous province, the Peronists, whether Kirchnerists or militants such as those surrounding Governor Axel Kiciloff who would like to see retired as soon as possible to Cristina, could overcome the faction that ended up winning the liberal-libertarian intern, which would advise a demolishing blow to the milesty project that, until just one month ago, it seemed to directed.
Accustomed as it is to despise all politicians who are reluctant to pay printedness, Milei resists expanding his support base if, to do so, he had to agree with ideological allies determined to preserve their own party identity. Rather, he wants to add converts willing to make his confusing libertarian creed and therefore not put their intellectual supremacy at risk. While such an attitude has assumed the enthusiastic support of the many who believe that what the country needs is an authoritarian leader, it deserves the repudiation of those of independent mentality that, thanks to their talent and experience, would be able to make a very valuable contribution to the management of the national government that, it goes without saying it, so far it has not stood out for its efficiency.
If they were only ideological affinities, it would be natural for Milei and their operators to choose to “fuse” with the macristas, but understand that it would not be of interest to build a party that would soon acquire an elitist image. To consolidate in power, they will have to get the support of millions of voters who until very recently were Peronists not by ideological convictions but for a matter of identity. Although at first glance the faithful to Milei on the one hand already Cristina on the other live in universes that are radically different and work according to rules that are incompatible, what they have in common is the desire to belong to a socio -political sector that accepts them as they are, provides the impression of respecting them and seems able to write down many triumphs in the months and years to come.
To defeat Peronist politicians in the Buenos Aires suburbs and in the most backward provinces in the interior, the Mileists will have to deprive them of the support of the accustomed to supply votes. If the most recent surveys reflect what is really happening in the collective mind, they are achieving it. In politics, ideas are worth less than sensations. It is not an aberration that, in France, Italy and other European countries, millions of people who had voted for decades in favor of the Communist Party, currently support movements, such as those headed by Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni, who in ideological terms are in their antipodes. Like the communists of yesteryear, such leaders attract the many who give a discounted that their own salvation will depend on the capacity of specific politicians to carry out drastic socio -economic changes. Far from harming them the epithets as “right -wing” or “neo -fascist” with which defenders of the established order try to stop them, help them by calling attention to the gap that separates them from “the caste.”
It may be unlikely that the groups that in Europe have taken the place of the left to improve the living conditions of their increasingly numerous electoral clientele, but at least offer an alternative to the status quo. In Argentina, Peronism has played a role similar to that of the parties that, rightly or without it, many in Europe consider to establish an order that, after promising a lot, failed in the eyes of a growing proportion of the working class and the low middle class.
The prospects for freedom advances from Milei are more promising than those faced by their European equivalent hypothetics. Unlike France, Italy, Germany and other countries of the Old Continent, Argentina lost so much land in the decades that followed World War II that, in theory at least, would be enough for some relatively modest reforms to enable a prolonged stage of vigorous economic growth. As long as Trump does not cause a great planetary crisis that has terrible consequences for countries with precarious economies, Milei’s optimism could be justified. Although it would seem that the recovery of the “productive apparatus” has been delayed, there are signs that the energy sector is about to experience a very significant boom, which, among other things, would make more manageable the financial problems that so many headaches are causing.
