He dreamed of occupying the Rivadavia Seat, but his wish was cut short in the first round. Patricia Bullrich ends 2023 with a consolation prize: she will be able to apply the plan that she had in mind only in Security, her specialty. She convinced Javier Milei that she was the best option, even though that caused an internal problem for the President with her running mate, Victoria Villarruel, who hoped to have influence in the matter.
The government program that Bullrich presented to him has everything that the first president was looking for: order outward, in the street; and order within, in the ministry. “The thing is that here it was all a viva la pepa,” he told her. And in his first week in his new position he already showed his mark: “Order must be restored in the country. There are entire areas where the law is not followed, mainly in Rosario,” he ordered his collaborators. He also began to demand a series of changes from his employees: the first, full presence. The Minister of Security does not want to go unnoticed, even in a foreign cabinet.
The plan. The first thing Bullrich noticed, as soon as he returned to the ministry, was that he needed to redress some personnel issues. The first: he found a large group of employees who, since the pandemic, had been working from home at least a couple of days a week. He signed a resolution demanding their return.
The second issue she demanded was that the biometric access control of the ministry building that she had placed in her previous administration and that, according to what those around her say, stopped being used during Aníbal Fernández’s incursion, begin to be used again. “The machines remained in place, but they passed by her side,” her team protested. That way, there were no records about who was or wasn’t going to work.
The minister also wants to make changes to police training. She still does not have the project ready, but, as she learned from NEWS, she will seek to reform entry into the forces. “They were leveling down,” she protested when she found out that they had removed a mechanism that filtered admission to schools: the socio-environmental report. She asked to return to the previous system, which was used during the macrismo.
But the highlight of the beginning of Bullrich’s management was outward. The two axes will be to be firm in the face of the pickets, which they believe could be very numerous due to the adjustment measures that Milei and the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, are going to take; and pacify Rosario, the Santa Fe city besieged by drug trafficking. In her first week back in power, she already expressed concern for both of them.
With Maximiliano Pullaro, the new governor of Santa Fe, he is constantly on the phone. After the provincial president ordered changes in the prisons, to prevent drug lords from continuing to operate their gangs from the cells, he received a death threat: they shot up a hospital and left a note saying that they would kill him and his family. “I don’t stop anything. “I am going to increase the pressure,” the governor told NOTICIAS.
Since the threat, Bullrich has called him at least once a day. And at the close of this edition, he received Pullaro and the mayor of Rosario, Pablo Javkin, in his office. He was looking for a photo in which his support is evident, in addition to planning crime intervention maps in that city.
The second image of his first week at the head of the Cabinet was the march of Raúl Castells’ organization: the Movement of Retirees and Unemployed demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Labor to demand food for their picnic areas and an update on salaries and social plans. But the anecdotal thing is that he did it on the sidewalk, without blocking vehicular traffic.
The photo of the City Police creating a human fence on the cordon is what the minister had imagined. That is why she congratulated the Buenos Aires Government, Waldo Wolff, with whom she had defined her strategy. Emboldened, the official went one step further: he proposed an anti-picketing law, “that punishes repetition,” he explained. And he completed: “Every time a person cuts a street, a flagrante delicto is issued. Three times, preventive detention.” They are analyzing it.
In a week filled with economic announcements, Bullrich has already achieved some prominence in Milei’s cabinet. The problem for the official is that, while she consolidates herself in the new government, she moves away from her last space. The PRO redefines its leadership, Mauricio Macri wants to regain power and the Minister of Security is in check.
Internal. On Wednesday the 13th, the former president summoned PRO representatives to his office in Vicente López. The objective of the meeting, the invitation said, was to create “partisan catharsis.” Neither Bullrich nor the former head of the Buenos Aires government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, were present. The tension does not go down.
The relationship between the minister and the former president ended with Bullrich’s decision to be part of the libertarian cabinet. Macri let it be known that she “cut herself.” The official left him a text message that journalist Viviana Canosa read on the air on her television program: “I do not submit to Mauricio,” she crossed it herself. In their surroundings they try to disguise the situation: they assure that they speak on the phone and that the dialogue was never cut off, but they cannot hide the disagreements between those who, until the general elections, were allies.
Macri’s position with respect to the Milei government is “responsible accompaniment.” He asked his people to give him parliamentary support, but analyzing each law. Setting limits.
Meanwhile, the PRO will go to elections to replace Bullrich, who announced that he is leaving the presidency. A new power map will be configured in the party: Macri could once again lead the space that he founded. The minister had asked to do it in the first quarter of 2024, but those responsible believe that, due to the situation that the country will go through, it would not be the time to debate her internal situation. They will have to postpone it for later, although it is not resolved yet.
The one who the minister assisted was her Defense counterpart and former running mate, Luis Petri. The radical lacked names to complete the organization chart of his portfolio, but Bullrich approached him with former officials of his who were well received. His influence extends into the cabinet.
While he rearranges himself in his old office, Bullrich evaluates the upcoming challenges: those internal to his ministry, those of power in the PRO and those of his management in Security. He knows that, with the shock produced by the economic measures, times of high conflict on the streets are coming. They prepare for the pickets to emerge. “You have the right to protest, but don’t worry, we are not going to let you do anything,” he told the President. It is not the way he expected to end 2023, but at least, for his political interests, he is not on the plain.
