October 22, 2023 was a black day for the PRO. Perhaps the worst of a story that had started two decades earlier: that day, the yellow party finished third in the general elections, far from the first place that the majority of its leaders took for granted a short time ago. That day was a true catastrophe for its members, as was reflected for posterity in the faces of Patricia Bullrich, Mauricio Macri and María Eugenia Vidal in the bunker in Parque Norte. In that scenario, the serious expression of someone whom Diego Santilli had brought into space, the economist José Luis Espert, also appeared.
“El Colo”, however, did not allow the tough defeat to hit his spirit. The day after the electoral fiasco he spent glued to his phone, and he spoke to every contact he could think of to see who could give him the number of a member of the leadership of La Libertad Avanza. Santilli had a problem: unlike what happens to this old sea dog with 99 percent of politics, he had never exchanged a word with any of the libertarians. From River, the club that his father presided over during the ’80s, they gave him Guillermo Francos’ phone number. “Guillermo, I’m Diego Santilli. I want to tell you that I am available to you for whatever you need.” The answer took him by surprise. “What are you doing, old man? I think you have the wrong number. I’m not Guillermo Francos,” an anonymous citizen told him.
At that precise moment a story began to be woven that lasted until Santilli became, through narco-scandal and chaos, the libertarian candidate for Buenos Aires and then Minister of the Interior. Until Karina Milei, his now sponsor within the Government, pushed him to replace Espert and then Francos, “el Colo” accumulated, behind closed doors in politics and especially in the PRO, anecdotes of all kinds but that had the same beginning, middle and end: Santilli wanting to get closer to LLA and being false. Or, some acid observer would say, in something close to ridiculous: dozens of private messages to Javier Milei without a response, or a bitter negotiation with his sister, at the beginning of the year. There Santilli would have started by asking for first place on the Buenos Aires list (“I’m going over from the PRO, but I have to be the head of the list”), but in the face of repeated refusals from the general secretary (“you come over and then we’ll see”) he would have ended in an unconditional surrender (“I’ll go over, then tell me where I can go”). Perhaps it is all gossip on the part of those who were hurt by him within the yellow party – a list headed by Macri himself – but it does not matter: the truth is that scenes of this style spread at this time like wildfire in the corridors of power.
Santilli, on the other hand, transformed his sudden and immediate libertarian devotion into a strength. Weaving silently, patiently and under the radar, he built a good bond with the person who has the most power within the Government. And he showed those who spread those stories that in the end it was he who had the last laugh.
Minister
Santilli, now, is going to have to get used to the dynamics of a very particular Government. The day after Milei proposed, without prior notice, that he join the Cabinet, he received the first notification of where he got himself. The thing is that on Monday the 2nd the libertarian made a request that not many presidents usually make to one of their ministers: that he accompany him to pray.
That afternoon at the Casa Rosada several unprecedented events in Argentine history occurred. For the first time, a group of evangelical pastors was invited to pray at the headquarters of the Executive Branch, one more chapter in the advancement of this religious space during Milei’s government, about which this magazine has already written. The other shocking event that occurred was what the president said after the pastors present prayed with him: as revealed by the newspaper La Nación, the economist assured there that he had had advance notice from “One”, as he calls God, that he would triumph in the legislative elections. And that he had taken that triumph as proof of a “divine intervention” and a “supernatural surprise.”
He knew this, Milei said, because before the elections he had shared a spiritual encounter with a pastor and Santilli. “The religious blessed us, prayed and left,” he said. What must “El Colo” have thought when he heard all this, or when he shared that private blessing? The man was always a devout Christian, and in fact in several interviews he spoke of the triumph as a “decision from above.” That way Santilli will make even more friends.
However, Rodríguez Larreta’s former deputy boss will have other, much greater difficulties in his new position. The first will be to avoid the fate suffered by another who once commanded the ministry, Guillermo Francos. The then Chief of Staff had several dramas during his administration: on the one hand, he was harassed by the wild inmates and the constant operations he suffered, while on the other, his word did not have the weight that his position indicated. More than once, the outgoing official committed to this or that thing with a governor that was not later validated by the President or his sister. Will the portfolio have another weight with “El Colo” in charge or will he suffer the same long agony of power as Francos?
Santilli, of course, believes that the story will be different. And he has, unlike his predecessor, an important asset in his favor: the relationship he was able to build with Karina Milei since they met at Macri’s house on the night of the Acassuso Pact, prior to the runoff. Calls, lunches, dinners at mutual friends, technical assistance in Congress: “el Colo” did a great job to gain the favor of the general secretary, something that very few people in the ruling party can say. It was she who pushed him to be a minister, although there are as many versions as there are tribes in La Libertad Avanza. There are those who swear that Javier Milei wanted Santiago Caputo there but that he refused, afraid of being at the mercy of the empowered Karina and after seeing his much-announced plan for a “takeover” of the Government by him and his soldiers fail; others that there were three options on the table and that Santilli was the one who closed the most against the rusty iron triangle.
About the “Colo” the only thing they can validate is that, without prior notice, on Sunday, November 1, he received a call from Milei and that, without hesitation for a moment, he accepted the invitation. In the PRO they say that, from the first day of this Government, Santilli repeated that he was going to end up, sooner rather than later, within the Cabinet. His dream came true, although the new official should be careful: only in the last few weeks three ministers -Francos, Catalán and Werthein- left slamming the door, in addition to the fact that, leaving Congress and moving to the Executive, he is within reach of a decree or a presidential fury. Like the story of Icarus, everyone who gets too close to the Milei always ends up burned. And that fire, at Karina’s moment of greatest power within the Government, burns brighter than ever.
Phone
The first person that Santilli notified, after breaking up with Milei, was his wife Analía Maiorana. Then it was the turn of Cristian Ritondo – one of the losers of the Cabinet change, if one takes into account that he was one of the main promoters of the merger of the PRO with LLA and was left without a ministry or the presidency of the Chamber, and even his bloc suffered a loss due to the six deputies that Bullrich took to the ruling party – and finally Macri. That his former boss only came in third place is not a coincidence at all. Both have a terrible relationship, which although it is now going through a certain moment of thawing – the fact of having notified him before making the appointment public, identical to what happened before becoming a Buenos Aires candidate – bears a mortal wound: Santilli’s jump to the Government does not come pushed by Macri or the PRO, but quite the opposite, it is a “theft” from Milei to that space, as they had previously done with Bullrich or Luis Petri. A year ago, Santiago Caputo had sent that warning to the former president: “Argentina is a paternalistic and caudillo-like country. For Milei to become a leader he first has to ‘kill’ Macri.” In that sense, it can be said that everything is going according to plan.
Nancy Pazos, Santilli’s ex-wife, has told an anecdote that illustrates this complex bond. During the wedding of Augusto Rodríguez Larreta, Horacio’s brother, he approached Macri to talk about politics. Although he clarified: “What I say is said by Nancy Pazos, not Diego Santilli.” Macri’s response, according to the journalist, was “such a horrible, shitty, arrogant lack of attention”: “I know that, what I don’t know is whether, when Santilli speaks, he or Nancy Pazos speaks.” To this kind of contempt on the part of Macri, who knew how to be his Minister of the Environment during his time as head of Government, something darker is added: the espionage that a group from the AFI carried out, during the Macri administration, on Santilli. Some scars do not suture over time.
Beyond the tug-of-war, many in the ruling party want to sell the incorporation of Santilli as a gesture of “openness,” something that even the United States seems to be demanding. A doubt floats in the Government: Will Karina tolerate “El Colo” continuing to be painted yellow? Or will he force him, as he did before with Bullrich, to join the LLA? If the sister manages to resist her temptation to be a killer, an interesting window opens for libertarians: Santilli could be the one to, by 2027, be the guarantor of a total fusion of the PRO in this administration.
Future
Santilli’s first task will be to draw up the 2026 Budget. Several pieces depend on that negotiation: on the one hand, the formal swearing-in of the “Colo” is subject to whether the “law of laws” is dealt with before or after December 10 – the swearing-in date of the new deputies and senators -, and on the other, it will be there where we will begin to see whether this portfolio will be empowered or not. To achieve this approval – after which the labor reform, the pension reform and the Penal Code reform will follow – it is more than likely that the governors will ask for something in return, and for that Santilli will need something that his predecessor almost never could count on: cash to send to the provinces. Will his intentions be given or will he see his intentions die in the face of Milei’s zero fiscal deficit dogma?
In that first line of definitions will also be the internal composition of the ministry. Can you put your own people? Santilli has a team – including Ezequiel Galli, former mayor of Olavarría, or Matías López, vice president of the Buenos Aires Legislature, to name a few – ready to take the field. But that will depend on the delicate internal balance of the Government, in addition to Karina’s intentions or not to also monopolize that area. Daniel Scioli, whose Tourism Secretary is within the Interior, is also hanging by a thread in his position. His sponsor Francos left and many imagine the motorcyclist also gone.
On a more distant horizon appear Santilli’s eternal desires to be governor of Buenos Aires, an ambition that he ratified with the victories on that soil in 2021 and now. Milei already communicated that intention to both of them. Will he understand Sebastián Pareja, Karina’s setter, who also wants the same thing? In the Interior they say that two of the three officials that the Buenos Aires native has there will stay in their place, as proof of some kind of agreement. We’ll have to see who laughs last this time.
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