As happened in the months that followed Javier Milei’s resounding victory over Sergio Massa in the November 2023 runoff, the other politicians have not yet recovered from the surprise that the results of the October legislative elections brought them. Until they manage to do so, Milei will remain alone at center stage and, of course, will try to make the most of the opportunity that the country has given him to promote the extremely ambitious political project he has conceived.
Although this project has a hyperrealistic basis – zero deficit, fiscal rigor, extreme deregulation and so on – Milei has decorated it with so many lights of fantasy that many who share its key ideas find it difficult to take it seriously. Is he a fake who has known how to take advantage of the widespread feeling that all the schemes that have been tried lately have failed, not only here but also in much of the rest of the world, or is he a true statesman who, at last, has found the solution to the great Argentine enigma that for generations has challenged the most seasoned economists, political scientists and sociologists in the world?
Be that as it may, despite doubts about his mental balance, since it is taken for granted that he would feel lost without the emotional support of his sister Karina and that therefore he will not be able to remove her from the place she occupies in the ruling team, Milei has returned to the center of the national political system thanks to the patent inability of the Peronists and others to devise convincing alternatives to the project he has forged. Stunned by what happened in October, when thanks in part to the intervention of Donald Trump and in part to the fear that Kirchnerism would return, a government that seemed to be exhausted suddenly rose up, politicians of all stripes are trying to get closer to the Milei. By displacing the Peronist Union for the Homeland, La Libertad Avanza has already become the first minority in the Chamber of Deputies; It would not be surprising if in the coming months it managed to add more adhesions.
The change in climate that has produced Milei’s recovery after a painful period could hardly be more shocking. It is as if all the scandals and mistakes that the president and his aides made and that caused so much commotion in the weeks before the elections had been merely media phenomena with no importance in the real world. Is this what the Milei brothers believe? It would not be advisable for them to trust too much in the good luck that has fallen to them, since in that case they would soon provoke even greater crises than those that recently threatened to tear their joint management to shreds.
Whether they understand it or not, the restructuring of the economy and therefore of the social order of the country that they have proposed will require a Herculean effort on the part of La Libertad Avanza, a party that is still far from being consolidated. The fate of the government, and the country, will depend largely on the conviction that, given both national and international circumstances, Milei’s strategy is the only viable one and that resistance to the drastic changes he has proposed must be overcome.
It will not be enough for libertarians to make numbers in Congress. They will also have to radically reform many public institutions to make them more effective and, in the meantime, persuade the majority of citizens that the measures they have in mind are essential. None of this will be easy for you. It is one thing to point out that in today’s world all attempts to build alternatives to market capitalism, which always begin with the replacement of entrepreneurs with politicized bureaucrats advised by ideologues, have had regrettable and, in some extreme cases, atrocious results. It is another to reconcile those harmed by legal adjustments with the loss of what, for many, are inalienable acquired rights that must be respected. In this area, as in many others, Argentine society is extremely conservative. As other reformist governments learned, it is programmed to resist structural changes.
Milei is president because, in addition to committing to replace a dysfunctional economy with a very different one that is even more “liberal” than those existing in other latitudes, he stated that he was determined to do something similar with the country’s political class, that is, with “the caste.” Unfortunately, there is no indication that those who make up the so-called sector have paid any attention to the messages sent to them by the electorate. On the contrary, instead of trying to impress voters with their moral and intellectual solvency, many of the legislators who took office last week chose to appear frankly unworthy of the role they were elected to play. Not only the Kirchnerists who shamelessly claimed their kleptocratic ideals – it would be amazing if some really believed that Cristina never misappropriated anything when she governed the country – but also the libertarians who supposedly represent a very different political style, managed to stage a grotesque show.
By acting like this, they reminded us that, far from wanting to improve themselves, “the caste”, reinforced by many of Milei’s fans, is alive and well and has no intention of allowing him to change his ways. In the short term the government may feel benefited by the very low quality of so many professional politicians who say they are determined to support it without worrying about the details, but if Milei wants to remake the country, over time it will be harmed by its own contribution to the deterioration of the national political culture.
Although many regret that nowadays it is common for people to vote for the lesser evil, the skepticism expressed in this way is healthy. In mature democracies, the majority is satisfied that politicians are honest people willing to subordinate their own material aspirations to the common good. The bad reputation of the local “caste” is due precisely to the not arbitrary suspicion that too many are more interested in enriching themselves through means that may not be illegal but are still despicable, as is routine in the notoriously useless Buenos Aires legislatures, than in trying to find solutions for the problems faced by those forced to finance their activities by paying taxes and other charges.
For the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, this depressing reality brings advantages; He was able to take advantage of it to get the votes he needed so as not to be constrained to better manage the financial resources of the Peronist fiefdom that he is trying to manage. To ingratiate himself with the local “caste”, last week Kicillof chose to distribute positions in Banco Provincia and the leafy public administration among legislators who would otherwise have prevented him from going into debt for almost four billion dollars. In this undertaking, Kicillof was accompanied by provincial deputies from the UCR and Pro who put their private group’s access to a box full of money before defending the interests of ordinary Buenos Aires residents.
Kicillof, who sees himself as a presidential candidate and dreams of replacing his former godmother Cristina as the natural leader of Peronism, is reluctant “on principle” to reduce public spending in the grossly oversized jurisdiction that he has managed. For Milei, the fact that the governor is a “fiscal degenerate” makes him a very valuable adversary, since, in addition to lacking charisma, he gives the impression of feeling nostalgia for outdated economic schemes, which is why he sometimes calls him “the Soviet one.” This being the case, I would be surprised if it helped him get the credits he is looking for. Milei also benefits from Kiciloff’s conflict with Cristina and the militants of La Cámpora, which is contributing so much to the jibarization of Peronism that, to get out of the confusing crisis that is consuming it, it would have to renew both its leadership and its doctrinal support.
Will he be able to do it? At this point, it seems unlikely that Peronism will be able to reorganize itself before the next presidential elections, but it will survive as “a feeling” even if it stops being a significant political movement, which will happen unless it recovers its capacity to provide those who are active in its ranks with paths to political power, a certain social prestige and, of course, money.
For the many libertarian leaders who were trained in Peronism, Milei will be the spiritual heir of the general who, in circumstances very different from the current ones, also combined pragmatism with strong doses of mysticism to create a very powerful mixture. Although there is no reason to suppose that Milei’s often unfriendly behavior is the result of the advice of political publicists who specialize in creating images for their clients, it seems appropriate for someone hoping to gain the support of those who do not feel represented by the PJ hierarchs or the decrepit union gerontocracy.
