Javier Milei is not the first president to declare himself determined to abolish what was done in the recent past so that Argentina can rediscover its authentic self. On the contrary, speaking like this is a national tradition. There are few presidents who, upon taking office, did not declare themselves determined to refound the Republic. However, no other president took charge of the country at a time as economically critical as the current one, with an inflation rate that according to him is close to 15,000 annually, the Central Bank emptied, at least half of the population mired in poverty and a financial reputation that is worse than that of the Mafia. Under the government that just left, Argentina was on the verge of suffering a total socioeconomic collapse.
Milei does not feel discouraged by the magnitude of the disaster that the Kirchnerists have caused, perhaps because he understands that it would be impossible to imagine a more forceful manifestation of the congenital deficiencies of what he calls “collectivism.” Indeed, it was thanks to the spectacular failure of the scheme improvised by Cristina, Alberto Fernández, Sergio Massa and their entourage of “intellectuals” that a character as eccentric as him was able to obtain the support of almost 56 percent of the electorate.
Needless to say, Milei is not a liberal, libertarian or, as certain foreign media say, a common far-rightist. Although he sometimes speaks like an icy economist who is more concerned with numbers than the fate of flesh and blood beings, he also has a spiritual side to him. To the surprise of many, he combines rationality with cabalistic mysticism, which, at a time when anti-Semitism has become fashionable in much of the developed West, is a very positive hallmark. His interest in the biblical history of the Jewish people may not help him find solutions to the specific problems of the Argentine economy, but it allows him to see what he is doing from a certain historical perspective, which is not a minor detail.
In any case, in addition to the ethereal but presumably very powerful “forces from heaven” that he claims to trust, the President has the good will of the majority of the population and, what could be even more important, with the obvious fact that, because the state of the national economy was so unspeakably bad, any government, no matter how populist it aspired to be, would have been left with no other option than to order a truly brutal adjustment. Against them, there is a multitude of characters who, for ideological reasons or because their own interests are at stake, will act as if they were convinced that the crisis that is crushing the country is a crude neoliberal invention and that therefore it must be defended. the traditional corporate model.
Although everything suggests that this model has already self-destructed and that it would be advisable to build in its place another similar to those in force in the countries considered successful, there is no guarantee that Milei will be able to defeat those determined to put an end to this as soon as possible. its management. In the coming weeks she will face more dangerous enemies than the militant K who threw a bottle at her on Sunday when he was walking towards the Casa Rosada.
Even though some Kirchnerists clung to the hope that Massa would succeed, which would have posed a major problem, Cristina and her allies had already mentally prepared themselves to take advantage of the electoral defeat they foresaw. They would do so assuming the position of defenders of those harmed by the adjustment that they knew was inevitable. Thus, faithful to the revolutionary slogan of “the worse, the better,” they encouraged Massa to further aggravate an atrocious economic situation that, they estimated, would explode in the hands of the next government.
So far, Kirchner’s strategy has worked well; Milei has been forced to implement an adjustment that, if the rules demanded by those who pay tribute to “the codes of politics” continue to be imposed, should be more than enough to make him the most hated man in the country. To defeat what these leaders of “the resistance” have proposed, Milei will not be enough to highlight the patent deficiencies of a populist order that is notoriously corrupt and ineffective, in addition to insisting that it would be foolish to blame it for the plight of the many. impoverished by Kirchnerist cynicism. He will also have to ensure that more members of “the caste” that he despises are influenced by the majority that supported him in the dark room and by the many people from all social conditions who filled the center of Buenos Aires to celebrate his arrival to power. .
Although politicians ultimately depend on their ability to ingratiate themselves with voters, when there are no elections in sight they tend to privilege their relationship with other members of the club to which they belong, which has led them to dig a dangerously wide trench between the political class and others. Although Milei took advantage of the resulting gap to achieve the presidency, the hostility towards him from many members of “the caste” could prevent him from achieving the changes that the electorate is demanding.
The President will already understand that he will not be able to minimize the role of Congress by installing a kind of plebiscitary democracy. His support base would collapse if he undertook an autocratic adventure that, of course, would provide his enemies with excellent pretexts to resort to violence. At most, he can urge legislators to adopt more realistic attitudes towards the problems suffered by a country that for decades clung to schemes that turned out to be increasingly outdated.
Of course, the fact that Milei has made “there is no money” a popular slogan and that many poor young people applaud him every time he utters the fateful word “adjustment,” can be taken as a sign that a cultural rebellion against the supposedly progressive facilitation. Is “the common sense of Argentines” changing, which, for decades, allowed the Peronists to continue dominating the political scene, while in other parts of Latin America similar movements died a natural death? We will soon know the answer to this key question.
Genuine options before the country are limited; Even if one hundred percent of the population were in favor of prolonging the status quo, it would be impossible to do so. The Kirchnerist version of the forces coming from heaven, the monetary expansion that, in the opinion of the resolutely heterodox economists who advised Cristina, would solve everything, has only served to pour gasoline on the inflationary fire. Unfortunately, he is not entirely exaggerating Milei when he says that there are no alternatives to a shock policy and that attempting gradualism would be worse than useless since it would fail. With Economy Minister and presidential candidate Massa monopolizing power, the already decimated Kirchner government managed to deprive the country of other options.
No matter how pressing the basic needs of those who have become accustomed to depending on the “present State” for survival, unless the country produces much more there will be no way to increase public spending in real terms. Without more production of goods of all kinds, more exports and an unusual degree of fiscal responsibility that convinces the rest of the world that Argentina is not a lost cause, the country would very soon resemble the miserable Venezuela of dictator Nicolás Maduro. It is for this reason that Milei is right when he commits to ensuring that, on this occasion, it is not the private sector that pays for the adjustment but the openly clientelist State that grew enormously in the twenty years that the Kirchnerato lasted.
There are libertarians who are tempted by anarchism and fantasize about eliminating the State, but it would seem that Milei will be content with privatizing what can be privatized and trying to improve the performance of what remains until conditions allow his government, or one of the following, can undertake a program of reforms aimed at ensuring that the public administration is in a position to contribute to the socioeconomic development of the country.
While in some advanced nations, such as France and Japan, the State remains elitist and for this reason attracts the most talented, hence the great prestige of those who fulfill hierarchical functions, here those who claim the role of the State tend to be less severe. , since in principle they are contrary to merit: for them, the public sector must serve as a refuge for militants and people who have been unable to find work in the private sector, which, naturally, demoralizes those who, for strangeness of their politicized bosses, they want to contribute something positive to society. To the alarm of those accustomed to treating the State as part of the political loot, the new government wants to sweep away the gnocchi of La Cámpora and related organizations; It began by demanding the presence of all public employees, a claim that will surely cause headaches for those who do not know the places where they supposedly work.
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