Cristina Kirchner returns to the center of the Argentine political arena with a volley of darts at Milei

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner used a 33-page document to break the silence she maintained during the first two months of Javier Milei's government.

The former president, the top opposition figure, regained the centrality of the Argentine political agenda this Wednesday by attacking the “ferocious adjustment program” of Milei, whom she considers “an economist

in the [Casa] Rosada.”

Kirchner predicted that her economic policy will increase unemployment “and social desperation in a kind of planned chaos” that paves the way for the dollarization to which the president aspires.

Prominent members of the Government came out to respond to him and even asked him to shut up.

Inflation in January was 20.6% monthly and rose to 254.2% year-on-year, the highest in South America.

Hours before the official figure was released, Kirchner questioned Milei about the heart of his economic policy, the fight against inflation.

The former president questioned whether the main cause of the price increase is the monetary issue with which the fiscal deficit is covered and maintained that the shortage of dollars also plays a role.

“Compulsive indebtedness in said currency only aggravates this shortage by deepening the already known and structural external restriction of our bimonetary economy,” she wrote.

In the text he speaks in plural – it could be on behalf of the Peronist coalition Unión por la Patria (UxP), but he does not mention it explicitly – and after a long historical review he encourages in-depth discussions about the Argentine State and reforms to the that Kirchnerism opposed for years, such as the health system and changes in labor regulations, among others.

The apparent hand extended to the debate contrasts with the fierce opposition maintained by UxP during the almost two months of parliamentary debate on the State scrapping megalaw presented by Milei.

The Peronist coalition - the first minority in the Chamber of Deputies with 99 legislators compared to the 38 of La Libertad Avanza de Milei - voted against this law as a bloc, which was finally withdrawn by the Government after the rejection of key articles.

The Government responded to the letter on multiple fronts.

Milei limited himself to retweeting the message of an economist who pointed out that “dollarization is the only way to avoid (in part) the excesses of Argentine populism” and left the heavy ammunition in the hands of his most experienced ministers.

“The truth is that this lack of self-criticism is striking,” the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, declared on radio Miter, “This lack of syndic responsibility, I'm not even saying political, to take charge of the disaster in which they have plunged the Argentina and has the nerve to express himself as if he were not responsible for anything.”

The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, chose to directly confront the opposition leader.

“You appear again only to gloat in the social, cultural and economic destruction you produced,” the first tweeted. “I invite you to have a little dignity and remain silent,” asked the second.

Kirchner had spoken out in the text against Caputo's appointment, considering him the "architect of the serial indebtedness of Mauricio Macri's government and the return of the IMF to Argentina" and raised the tone of the exchange through the networks.

“He is not the first in his family to try to silence me,” he said, referring to the case for his attempted murder in 2022. The complaint accused the Federal Revolution group of being behind the failed attack and of having received financing from the Caputos Hermanos company, but it was dismissed by the court.

Kirchner's message goes against the current of the short, chin-length texts that predominate on social networks and many even entered the debate without having read it.

“I didn't have time to read 33 pages because I was working,” the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, apologized when questioned at a press conference, although he slipped that now is “time for ideas that did not fail.”

The social leader and former presidential candidate for Peronism, Juan Grabois, did the same thing from the other side: “I still couldn't read the @CFKArgentina document, but from the responses of the white-glove Caputo, the milicoid pancake Francos and the narco-capitalist [ José Luis] Espert, I anticipate that you must tell some truths.”

Kirchner's words give him back a centrality lost since he retired from power two months ago.

His silence had begun even earlier, when he was left in the background in Sergio Massa's presidential campaign.

The political storm unleashed ends the southern summer holidays and predicts a year of extreme political polarization in the midst of the serious economic crisis that the country is going through.

The start of classes is at risk due to the lack of funds to pay teacher salaries in some provinces and more and more workers are struggling due to the rapid loss of purchasing power.

In 2023 alone, according to official data, salaries increased by 152.7% while inflation climbed by 211.4%.