Javier Milei issued two very contradictory signals
last week .
He ratified the determination to carry out the profound changes in Argentina that he promised in the electoral campaign that crowned him president.
He also raised
more questions than already existed
about the mechanism he will end up using to execute them.
How will he combine governance with an efficient management method?
Both things, for the moment, circulate in a nebula.
After the failure to have the “Omnibus Law” approved in the Deputies, he began another experiment.
That of continuing his brand new administration facing the political system.
He disqualified Congress and launched an offensive against the governors.
Of the 24 existing ones, none belongs to him.
He would not have realized that that defeat also had a lot to do with
a decision-making format in power that was not working.
Personalism threatens the possibilities of a ministerial team that is also invertebrate, responsible for exploring arid institutional paths for an officialdom that lacks experience.
After the last disbursement of US$4.7 billion, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in addition to supporting Milei's plan, formulated three considerations.
He argued that stabilization will be complex.
He recommended the convenience of
generating social and political support
to support it through clear communication and assistance to the neglected sectors.
The President seems to have anchored the communication for now.
In this area there would be a striking similarity with the practices that he implemented for decades in Kirchnerism.
Essential information is too often transformed into a story.
The well-known disconnect between facts and reality.
Another familiar trait is discovered: the verbal virulence with which it operates on a dismembered, suffering society without a certain notion of a destiny, regardless of the proclamation of change that emerges from the Government.
It would seem difficult, in this way, to consolidate over time the support of 56% garnered in the runoff.
After the failure in Deputies Milei seemed to return to the sources of the electoral campaign.
She maintained that
“caste”
was once again the obstacle to her plans.
He spoke again about the supposed
dollarization
on the advice of Domingo Cavallo.
They were the magnets with which last year he attracted the tide of votes.
He counted, especially with that first argument, with an ease: the opposition that is willing to collaborate (PRO, radicalism and We Make the Federal Coalition)
is mired in a double crisis.
She remains orphaned of leadership.
She experienced the fall of the “Omnibus Law” with a level of public and private guilt that helped disguise the Government's malpractice.
It has been a round, in that aspect, won by the President.
The ploy could be short-lived, however.
It remains valid because barely two months of government have passed.
But within a reasonable period of time it would perhaps begin to become less effective.
Society will finally demand tangible results from Milei.
Gradually stopping paying attention to what the “damned caste” can do or not do.
In the last official communication-story, on the other hand,
words and manners emerged that only contribute hostility to a coexistence that has long since become toxic in Argentina
.
This ecosystem is also influenced by Kirchnerist intransigence and the street provocations of the left.
Milei himself dusted off the adjectives
“anti-people”, “criminals”, “coimeros” and “traitors”
for the opponents who, in his opinion, caused the blow of the “Omnibus Law”.
Returning to the analogies with the past, the President helped reproduce scenes that had the founding stamp of Kirchnerism in his time.
He spread lists of “loyal” deputies and photos of those he considered “traitors.”
It is difficult not to relate this practice to those public prosecutions carried out in Cristina Fernández's second term
against journalists, politicians or businessmen, whom he assumed were conspirators of the "national and popular" project.
The parliamentary history of the mega project concluded as it was imaginable that it would happen.
Due to a double mistake in its origin.
No change to the country's economic system, which has been in decline for more than 50 years, can be made in one fell swoop with the approval of 668 articles.
Less respecting the steps and times that institutional transit demands.
The revolution is something else.
The Government's lack of focus pushed it into another mistake.
Rush a majority ruling,
only to compete in the public imagination with the strike of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) on January 14.
That victory was obtained with 55 votes, although 33 dissented.
Preview of what would happen with the vote in particular.
Ignorance also emerged in specific events and even in interpretations.
The President ordered from Israel that the project return to committee without anyone warning him that it meant parking at marker zero.
The head of the block, Oscar Zago, agreed to ignore that aspect of the parliamentary regulations.
Santiago Caputo, the young advisor who served as Milei's courier abroad, ignores these and other intricacies.
He wouldn't have to know them.
The question is to discover the reasons for
unexpected decisions
in a context of such precariousness.
Another issue would be the linear reading that the ruling party makes of the behavior of the deputies of the collaborating blocks and their relationship with the governors.
Rolando Figueroa from Neuquén was blamed for having sent a legislator from his province to vote against.
It was not like that: Zago should have apologized publicly.
A similar charge fell on Maximiliano Pullaro, the president of Santa Fe,
unaware that a heterogeneous coalition governs that province.
The Santa Fe radicals accompanied the mega project.
Gabriel Chumpitaz, from the PRO, was absent at several times.
The socialists punished.
They celebrated the epilogue together with Kirchnerism.
Perhaps Milei did not spare a thought to try to understand this group in a maneuver of his own that allowed him to snatch three votes from Tucumán deputies contributed by the Peronist governor Osvaldo Jaldo.
Two others, of the total of five, respond to former governor Juan Manzur.
That capture was possible with a concession: it allowed, despite his liberal economic ideology, the maintenance of protection for the sugar industry.
Basic policy manual.
The entanglement with Córdoba turned out to be even greater.
Milei was upset because Congresswoman Alejandra Torres voted negatively on several articles and subsections.
The governor of Cordoba is Martín Llaryora but the legislator came from the hand of Juan Schiaretti.
Some libertarians made a surprising and anachronistic association.
Opposed to the libertarian principle of never thinking of a herd.
That deputy is the wife of Osvaldo Giordano, the head of the ANSES.
For that reason, would she have the obligation to align herself with official wishes?
Anger over that situation fueled rumors about Giordano's resignation.
The possible purge after the first failure turned the
libertarian internal into a hive.
The bloc of deputies is broken.
Patricia Bullrich, the Minister of Security, promotes oxygenation and firmness.
She has been adding influence.
She ignores that the head of ANSES was part of her campaign team with Carlos Melconian.
She looks askance at the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, for having brought Daniel Scioli closer.
She estimates that starting in March, Macrismo and the libertarians should converge into a single bloc in the Deputies.
With Cristian Ritondo replacing Martín Menen as head of the Chamber?
Luis Caputo seemed to remain oblivious to the twists and turns of politics.
I risk in the middle of the crossfire that the “Omnibus Law” is not essential.
It believes it has the necessary loopholes to continue implementing the adjustment.
The first was found with the approval of Milei: the cut of transportation subsidies in all provinces.
The most affected will be Córdoba and Santa Fe. The politically affected will also be the mayors of the large urban centers.
The conflict once again had a connection with Córdoba.
It was communicated by the Secretary of Transportation, Franco Mogetta.
An official who also arrived on the advice of Schiaretti.
Governor Llaryora preferred not to escalate the discussion and left the mayors of the capital city and San Francisco to take the lead in the battle.
They signed a very critical statement with 45 other peers from the interior.
The cut would only deepen the inequalities that exist in that area.
Subsidies for transportation in the interior represent 15% of the total.
About $100 billion.
The remaining 85% corresponds to the AMBA
, which, according to the Government's information, would remain “with corrections.”
The appeal to the benefit that the SUBE card would mean is relative.
It works only in 60 inland cities.
The urgency to reduce the deficit drives the Government, perhaps, to take hasty measures.
Sandra Pettovello, Minister of Human Capital, nobly insists on
liquidating the business of social organizations with the distribution of food
.
But the present is dull: she met last week with Caritas and an entity of the Evangelical Church to get them involved in the issue.
From Israel, on his political-religious tour, the President shared on networks, in Hebrew, a passage from the Bible that describes how
“the anger of Moses burned.”
A governor targeted by libertarians distributed that detail among his colleagues.
It seems early and risky to imagine the eve of a “holy war” in Argentina.