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?
