A 53-year-old man who believes he can talk to a dead dog through a medium and that the clones he had made of this animal give him advice on politics and economics. Summarized in just a few lines, it seems like the preview of a new science fiction film, one of those that, after watching it, leaves you with the feeling that the director went too far with his imagination. But it is far from being that. It is Argentina 2023, and that person is neither more nor less than the next president. He is Javier Milei, an unstable leader in whose hands will be the future of the 46 million citizens.
The great unknown at this time, in the minds of everyone who lives in this country, is one:What Milei plans to do When I get to the Casa Rosada? How much will he keep the promises – many of them delusional – that he has been making for years?
Whoever writes these lines has been following the libertarian for years. He saw it up close already in his time as a media economist, a time in which he interviewed him several times – and where he was an eyewitness of his famous tantrums – and then he covered this incipient phenomenon from the genesis of La Libertad Avanza. It was a long work that was published week by week in the magazine NOTICIAS, and that was later captured in a book by Editorial Planeta, until now the only biography written about the next President.
Having clarified that fact – some foreign media have even dared to classify this chronicler as “the journalist who knows the most about Milei” – the answer to the unknowns may seem bittersweet. But it is the reality: no one knows how the libertarian will govern. Nobody knows if he will implement everything he says he wants to do.
And this is not a journalistic resource to, as they say in the neighborhood, throw it in the corner. The heart of the Milei phenomenon is precisely that: the unknown. The first layer of the speech of the La Libertad Avanza voter usually moves from “It’s time to try something new” to the much-mentioned “it is impossible to have a different Argentina with the same people as always.” The fact that there was no prior historical experience to compare it to is exactly what made it so attractive. That practically no one – except some very studious economists – can document how nations work where the national currency disappeared and the US dollar is used instead, or what it is like to not have a Central Bank – to name just a few of the measures. It is precisely the engine of their electoral engineering.
That is why the comment is inevitable: No one can predict exactly which country is coming. with the incoming government. That is a reality, furthermore, exacerbated by Milei’s own unstable personality, someone who claims to make decisions based on things like the conversations she has with the clones of her dead dog.
Therefore, everything is uncertainty, except for one thing: Milei himself. “El Loco”, as he was already called in his years at the Cardenal Copello school, in Villa Devoto, is indomitable. He has a fury, a messianic faith, in which he believes that the only thing that could stop him is reality itself. But, as most of the economist’s current advisors who time and again suggest ideas or strategies that he never listens to, could attest, No one can convince Milei to do the opposite of what her head dictates. And that brain, a labyrinth in which clones, sorcerers, mediums and God coexist, only knows one way to structure itself. It is the rigid Austrian School, which dictates that absolutely everything that happens in this world is a good ready to be exchanged (if the price is right). Even an organ. Even a child.
What can you expect from a Milei government? One thing is for sure: The man will try to do everything that his theoretical framework, which for him is a way of explaining life and not just the economy, he suggests. He is going to try to do everything he promised he would be. Perhaps later the reality of this unstable country itself will put a brake on it, perhaps the Constitution will do so – and we should review the words of the President of the Supreme Court, Horacio Rosatti, at the event for the anniversary of NOTICIAS -, perhaps the social movements or unionism.
But nothing can stop “El Loco”. God predicted him, Milei thinks, that he had a “mission,” and that he was destined to be president in 2023. He told him that in 2020, three years ago. No one can get him off that horse now.
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