The national chain that the president starred this week continues to speak. Not only because of the endless of the message, which meant a 180 degree turn with respect to its recharged chainsaw story, but because these new electoral promises – of coup there are money for disabled, retired, public education and health, in addition to “the worst already happened” – in facts they mean a total capitulation. Javier Milei delivered his flags, without even blinking, before the threat of another devastating defeat in October, as some pollsters already predict.
If that feared scenario was consummated, governance would be complicated irreversibly, the markets and the dollar would accuse the impact and the street would become disabled for libertarians. There was too much at stake to insist with the intransigence that Milei continued to show until hours before his communication somersault, when he was still encouraged to veto the laws of university financing and pediatric emergency even after the malazo in the Buenos Aires elections. But not anymore: now, the fearsome lion is presented as a spoiled kitten.
Is that radical change of story credible? Of course not. Because the truth is that Milei, since it is Milei, always showed himself as a zero deficit fan and an enemy of the “fiscal degenerates”, the “progress” and social justicial causes, which he associates with “the evil one”, as he calls the devil. All this agenda, including that of claims in an area as sensitive as disability, for the libertarian is nothing more than an advanced “communism” (which continues to fight 35 years after the fall of the Berlin wall). Does it make sense, then, that you have changed your way of thinking overnight? Clearly, the change is due to the need, to the instinct of political survival. But not to conviction.
Secondly, those silver promises for everyone who has just launched the mimous kitten will be consummated? There are no reasons to believe that this happens, whatever the result of October. Because if the Government, against all forecasts, comes out of the election, will read that victory as a new blank check like the one they gave in 2023. The reaction, then, will be more chainsaw. And if instead loses, by far or little, the most logical thing is that the president decides to burn the ships and advance thoroughly with the adjustment as long as he has life in power. Lost lost, what remains is to flee forward.
Milei’s discursive turn impacts, but perhaps the pampering kitten does not manage to deceive anyone. It was already a lion for too long.
