The rise of Javier Milei is, what a novelty,
one more station on the long road of political parties towards irrelevance
.
The President confirms this every time he chooses the governors as interlocutors, whether to punish them or to summon them: in this case there is not much difference.
With the Constitutional Reform of 1994 that established direct voting and the disappearance of electoral colleges,
the governors lost the influence they gained over the presidents
when they designated a good part of the voters who ended up helping them reach the Casa Rosada.
Thus, many of the provinces were governed by
officials whose political survival depended on the
discretionary moves of the central government more than on their own regional economy.
This decline was reversed on a few occasions, which were almost invariably associated with the problems of the parties as organizers of conflicts and political agreements.
The 2001 crisis was one of them
.
At that time, in addition to Eduardo Duhalde and Raúl Alfonsín, the governors - mostly Peronists - appeared pressuring or talking to the Casa Rosada every day.
Fifteen years later, during the government of Mauricio Macri, the Nation
increased the portion of resources that financed the provinces
and many governors and mayors managed to increase their independence.
In addition to wallets in better condition, the fragmentation of political parties, which reached its maximum level in the last elections, returned part of the lost power to the governors.
Milei decided, then, to
understand and disagree with them
and not with the rest of the political leaders.
This Friday, practically all the governors will arrive at the Casa Rosada to
listen to what the Government has to tell them
.
They will also present a list of claims, all of them arranged in the budget axis.
To summarize it, the governors will say that, if the debt is added for the transfers that were planned for 2023, which the Government would not do throughout 2024 if it continues with its hand closed,
the provinces will have between 4.3 and 4.7 trillion of less pesos
.
Among the affected items are the National Treasury Contributions that were budgeted and that remained undistributed, the transfers for the Check Tax that were provided for in the 2017 fiscal consensus that the provinces signed with Macri and the collection of the Income Tax and of the Fuel Transfer Tax.
All of this was raised in the meeting held this week by the provincial Ministers of Economy with the Secretary of the Treasury, Carlos Guberman.
But, it is known, Milei prefers to talk
about the laws he needs in Congress
rather than the numbers that exasperate governors.
There, right at that point, his negotiating scheme is going to creak.
The reason is that the chambers of Deputies and Senators are the last refuge that the parties found.
It is true that the blocks today are atomized like never before, but Congress is, perhaps,
the last place in which the party leaders retain any weight
and where even the influence of the governors finds its limits.