Like someone observing an artifact that they have never seen before or an animal that they have not encountered, Cristina Kirchner spends a good part of her days
looking at what Javier Milei does, what he says and what he publishes on social networks
.
From her office at the Patria Institute, the former vice president calls her advisors to get data, asks economists for reports, meets with businessmen and tries to obtain information to understand
what is behind each phrase or statement of the President
, to determine if what it says is true or if it can be contrasted with different data.
An example.
Cristina takes seriously the idea of dollarizing the economy
that Milei announced time and time again.
She believes that the President's idea is to “crystallize the situation of the economy as it is now.”
“He already made the transfer of resources with the devaluation and the fall in salaries and now
he is going to want to consolidate that situation by dollarizing
,” Cristina said in one of the conversations she had this week at the institute on Rodríguez Peña Street.
To verify - or reinforce - that idea he did his own research and obtained a source of information that could be considered miraculous: a priest.
Carlos “Lito” Álvarez
, this is him, gave mass for twenty years in the Santa Teresita parish in El Calafate.
There he met the former vice president
.
Two years ago, the Church moved him to the parish of El Señor de la Misericordia in
Chalatenango, a small city in the far north of El Salvador
.
Thanks to that informant on the ground, today Cristina has on her cell phone the list of prices for the basket that the inhabitants of a dollarized country pay every day.
To give verisimilitude to her story, the former vice president usually tells those who visit her at the Instituto Patria the price of a pound of chicken wings, or potatoes and milk, on the Salvadoran streets, and compares it with the average salary. that is paid in El Salvador.
Her conclusion is that
in Nayib Bukele's country prosperity is not abundant
and that the same thing can happen in the dollarized Argentina that Milei proposes.
Inauguration of President Javier Milei legislative year in the National Congress.
Photo: Emmanuel FernándezPhotos Emmanuel Fernández - FTP CLARIN _EMA7234_1.JPG Z EFernandz Efernandez
Another case.
The former vice president followed the
President's fight with the governors
minute by minute .
In this case, she did not have to investigate too much, because she is in permanent communication with Axel Kicillof, one of those harmed by the dispute.
In this case, Cristina believes that the President wants to defund the provinces to force them to
sign a fiscal pact that leaves them with fewer resources than now
.
“It is true that the provinces got more funds with Macri and Milei wants to get them from them,” the head of Kirchnerism usually says.
His reaction to this situation was to make it clear that Congress has to start promoting its own agenda to defend the Provinces with three laws: one that distributes among the provinces and municipalities part of the proceeds from withholdings on soy exports, another that forces the Government to share a portion of the Country Tax that taxes the purchase and sale of dollars and finally, revive the Teacher Incentive Fund that expired in December.
To achieve these laws, Kirchnerism needs parliamentary agreements.
That's where Cristina's reasoning fails
.
No one on her team knows
how to get those agreements
, especially at a time when Milei keeps her popularity high.
When that happens, few politicians are willing to stand in front of a President.
This Friday, in his speech before Congress, Milei showed what he thinks about this issue, when he called on the governors to sign a ten-point agreement.
This pact contains some reforms, such as the Co-participation law, which could not be changed since the late 1980s.
It is difficult to think that, after failing with the treatment of the Omnibus Law,
the Government can achieve a change like that
.
The Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, had begun negotiating 15 days ago with
Peronist governors from the north
an agreement that contained some of the points of the agreement announced last night, but that idea flew into the air when the governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres, denounced that the national government
was withholding transfers of co-participating funds
.
In their conversations at Patria,
Cristina is encouraged to find virtues in Milei
.
She considers him a politician who understood the moment that Argentina is going through and who knows the main demands of the citizens.
She sees him as the one who best knows the change in communication that the omnipresence of the cell phone implies and the one who most efficiently takes advantage of the conversation on social networks.
“I wrote that he was a politician who makes shows and he admitted it himself,
it didn't bother him at all
,” Cristina repeats, amused.
She also praises Milei when she says that she is someone who “says what she really thinks,” and that “that's something that people notice.”
Although she does not admit it, Cristina - like the rest of the political leaders, analysts and businessmen -
is disoriented about the future
.
Nobody knows what can happen to Argentina in the coming months.
“Talking today about next year or the elections is like talking about what could happen in China in 50 years,” it is impossible, she said this week in one of her meetings.