Let's remember: Menem, the original, one day wore the number 5 of the National Team and played for a while with Maradona, and more for the stands. Another day he appeared at Luna Park without shrinking in front of the Argentine basketball players. He also closed route 2 to go to Mar del Plata in “his” Testarossa. He ate with the Rolling Stones and met Madonna. His divorce scandal was broadcast live from Olivos with the head of the Military House blocking the path of the president's still wife. In short,
he did not deprive himself of anything.
It must also be said that Menem promoted a very strong modernization of the country, drastically lowered inflation, bankrupted a large part of the national industry, invented one to one with the dollar, aligned Argentina with the US and Israel and formed part of the allied offensive in the Gulf by sending a pair of frigates. During his administration
there were two terrible attacks with many deaths
: the blowing up of the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA, cases that still remain unresolved although Justice again accused Iran as the intellectual author of those criminal bombs, which he linked to them. with the international turn that the government of that time took.
Menem was a politician with leadership and cunning who had
almost all of Peronism, including Néstor and Cristina, behind his policies
and his all-powerful minister, Cavallo. He was received at the White House by Bush, Sr., and ended up at Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth II, when the fires of the war over the Falklands were still burning. Behind Menem who was playing little games for the tribune, in the tumult of the palace interior, there were politicians who gave reason to his actions: his brother Eduardo, Corach and Bauzá, who often clashed with the powerful Cavallo.
But the power always belonged to Menem.
This entire introduction is to ask ourselves if we are in the
remake of that popular conservative
and, at the same time, modernizing essay. There are similar traits with Javier Milei and his policy of adjustment and his ability to
divert attention from what is important
. Also, in their
tense controversies with journalism
, a constant of governments since 1983, which with Cristina reached paroxysm and now Milei is on the way to generating a dangerous hostile climate that must stop.
Freedom without tolerance is mere cackling.
The main difference:
Milei is not Menem nor will he be.
Among other things, because there is another era in fragmented Argentina. Milei was honest when she said that she came to power by carom. A curiosity: Néstor also arrived by chance (he lost to Menem and then the Riojan defected, anticipating that he would be crushed in the runoff). Milei got 29% below Massa. Then 56% gave the libertarian the pass to the Presidency. There began the decline, which does not cease, of Macriism. Milei is focused on lowering inflation and building power. We Argentines are so dismayed by this scourge that it is celebrated that in March an index of 11% was achieved. It is true, the trend is downwards, which is auspicious, but it is not to throw butter at the ceiling
like a noisy chorus of sycophants does.
The most interesting thing about Milei is that he tries
to change the traditional logic of politics
, replacing or minimizing institutions, with the power that is still given to him by a majority that wants to end the decadence. It's a game with limits and Milei knows it:
if the perception of improvement begins to evaporate, her strategy will be ineffective.
One advantage it has is the
disorientation of the rest of politics,
which dances to the rhythm imposed by the President. Milei receives free favors: the CGT gives him the second strike in less than four months, breaking his own undeniable record of inaction that he had during the terrible previous government. The university mobilization that is being prepared does not turn out that way because their budget is exhausted. Although politics is always present, university agitation has been, here and in the world, a weighty factor.
However, as in the case of CGT, there is no one who can collect the revenue, if it appears. As long as the division of Peronism into “tribes” continues and they do not reinvent themselves, as Massa theorizes to do,
the ruling party is enough for the errors that the opposition, stuck in already proven formulas, can make.
The President has said it: Karina, his sister, is the boss. And there is no longer any doubt that she exercises power, supported by the revived remains of the Menem clan, in the branch that derives from Eduardo, who must bring his political and parliamentary experience to his children. The scandal in the Deputies that determined the mini fracture of the already small libertarian bloc is an example of the
carom that Milei speaks of
, now transferable to the alluvial conformation of her space. Karina would be convinced that this rebellion that ended with the fleeting elevation of a libertarian representative in the strategic Impeachment Commission had an external impetus. It is a conspiracy theory, to which politicians are addicted, which in this case would fit like a glove. She reveals, too, that she does not improve the political crudeness of the ruling party.
Another issue on which Milei does not give up is the increasingly eloquent gestures of friendship towards the White House. This week the transfer of the 34 supersonic F-16s that Denmark transferred to Argentina for 300 million dollars takes place. It is no small act that this act is occurring on a NATO base at this particular time. This acquisition did not begin now. In October, the State Department announced that the transfer of the planes was taking place, which meant that the option for Chinese or Indian planes was dropped. Milei, and Petri, Minister of Defense,
ratified and advanced in obtaining this sophisticated weaponry.
The F-16s are not covered by the British embargo dictated after the Malvinas war: they do not have parts of that origin. The French Super Etendard Modernisé that Macri brought
are still stopped because the embargo
affects certain spare parts for those machines. It remains to be seen how Milei's decision to support the Ukrainians against the Russian invasion continues. There are no indications that there is any Argentine logistical support, speaking of the F-16, but it is known that Denmark is interested in investing in Argentina so that the country can once again produce ammunition for 155 mm cannons. To get an idea of the global stress of the production of this ammunition, these data are worth: in Ukraine 7,000 projectiles of this caliber are fired per day, while it is said that at the time of the greatest Israeli offensive in Gaza this figure would have reached a thousand shots. diaries
We must then continue the visit that the Minister of Defense will make to Norway and Belgium, after receiving the F-16s. Petri will go to Oslo to conclude the agreement that will allow the P-3 reconnaissance planes that Taiana acquired to operate their radars to control illegal fishing in Argentine waters. There is the American OK to move forward. The most important thing about Petri's visit to Brussels will be to ask NATO for Argentina to join as a “global ally,” a process that would take at least a couple of years. He would allow, it was said, the Argentine military to access training and joint operations. Here too the British veto, suggestively, will be set aside.