The far-right Javier Milei is the new president of Argentina for the next four years: on taking office he ratified his “chainsaw” plan and said that the adjustment would fall on the state and not on the private sector, but acknowledged that it would hurt “activity, employment and wages”. It is not a dream or a dystopia, it is real.
It was not a defeat of Peronism, or of Kirchnerism, it was a defeat of all progressivism, of the left, not only of Argentina but of all of Latin America. Milei will be another voice of the US and European neo-fascism in the region, a spearhead against China, the main trading partner, and a furious enemy of the integration of our peoples and the region, the only form of sovereignty and development (words that Milei omitted in his speech).
Milei and his La Libertad Avanza, with misogyny disguised as defence of the family, open racism, xeno, aporo and homophobia, try to replace guarantees of employment and minimum wellbeing for the citizenry with policies of the most orthodox and plutocratic neoliberalism.
If during the election campaign Milei promised that the adjustment would be paid by the (political) “caste” and not by the people, now he changed that to “the state” and not the private sector. Under the false excuse that “there is no money” he will maintain the fabulous business of the business sector while he unloads a brutal adjustment on the majority.
He announced an “adjustment that is inevitable”, which must be in the form of “shock or nothing” because gradualism never worked (according to the lesson taken from the government of his neoliberal partners led by Mauricio Macri). There is no alternative, said Milei, because “there is no money”.
Not true. There is money… but it is taken by the banks, the International Monetary Fund, the privatised companies, the transnationals, the investment (or plunder) banks, the agropower and the food companies that reprice daily. But Milei will not touch their interests, he will protect them.
In his speech from the balcony of the Casa Rosada, he once again memorised the mantra of the “libertarians”: “Liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others, based on the principle of non-aggression and in defence of the right to life, liberty and property”.
Milei recites “freedom” but does not know about democracy: he announced that it will be the people (among them his voters and followers) who will pay for the shock therapy -the basis of his economic plan-, while the benefits will go to private companies. And he recalled the infamous phrase of Margaret Thatcher, the destroyer of the British welfare state: “There is no alternative”.
The post-fascist president’s brutal fiscal adjustment will be absorbed by the state through brutal cuts to social programmes and in a multitude of branches of government. The amount is equivalent to five months of government spending, which means that from one day to the next, four out of every 10 pesos will disappear from the budget.
Milei made a harsh diagnosis of the “inheritance received” to formulate a blackmail: a harsh fiscal adjustment plan must be accepted or else the chaos of hyperinflation and stagflation will ensue. This operation is based on the terrible social situation left by the government.
He also left a message of a repressive threat against social protest, which will undoubtedly grow in the face of the announced plans: “Those who cut off the streets will not receive assistance from society: those who cut off the streets will not be paid. Those who want to use violence or extortion to obstruct change will find themselves up against a president of unshakeable convictions. We are not going to give in, retreat, or surrender, but rather move forward with the changes that the country needs.
The first government actions were announced on Sunday afternoon. It was the foreign minister, Diana Mondino, who made the first announcement, stating that Argentina will join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while Milei signed his first decree, aimed at shaping the structure of his new cabinet, including the repeal of previous rules to allow his sister, Karina Milei, to join as Executive Secretary.
Don’t stop suffering
Many were confused: it is not a new “I have come to propose a dream” but an “I have come to postpone a dream” because first, you have to wait, first you have to suffer. Not even a “stop suffering” of the evangelical Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, with which the Brazilian ultra-right-wing ex-president Jair Bolsonaro used to share his views.
He is certainly original: he is the first president in democracy (not only in Argentina, I believe) to win an election campaign by promising brutal cuts in education, health, employment and wages. Perhaps Milei’s strength and weakness is that he has no past. He is the new thing, the idea of change without any management experience… and with some ideas removed from old scripts.
The man tortured by his parents, bullied at school, the loser, the madman, the economist, the media man, the one who talks to his dead dogs through a medium has managed to reach the highest office to which someone with barely two years of experience on the political chessboard can aspire. The “easily infiltrated” alliance that was consolidated in 2021 as La Libertad Avanza, has come to power, notes the Peronist Agencia Paco Urondo.
It adds that Milei has succeeded in being the author of a great social discourse fed up with the cynicism and failures of the last eight years of drip-feed crisis. In his anger, there is a cornerstone made of frustrations and an ethical questioning that Peronism willingly ignored. Speeches of freedom, security, corruption, and republic that it has given up because it did not know how to respond. What made us think that we could attract a future with repeated words, he asks himself?
The Congress was attended by prominent right-wingers such as Jair Bolsonaro, the King of Spain Felipe VI, and leaders such as the Ukrainian Volodymir Zelenski, who forgot about the war so as not to miss the party. But the popular mobilisation was much smaller in quantity than expected by La Libertad Avanza, demonstrating that the new government is also weak in terms of mobilisation power.
On Sunday, Javier Milei entered the esplanade of Congress at almost midday, where he was received by the still vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, dressed entirely in red. She made comments to him and Milei laughed, in a comedic move that would be repeated throughout the ceremony (only interrupted at the beginning, when Milei’s supporters started shouting things at her and she gave him the finger to fuck you).
Outgoing president Alberto Fernández handed her the presidential baton and sash and whispered, “good luck”. Milei showed Cristina the baton: on the handle was carved the image of her five dogs (Conan and his four clones) and she laughed, surprised.
Let the people be sacrificed
Like all neoliberals, Milei will impose supreme efforts and painful sacrifices on the people, while the upper echelons maintain all their privileges: not only has he not spoken of reducing his salary, but he has already given free rein to his exhibitionist displays: at everyone’s expense he will undertake a millionaire’s renovation of the Casa Rosada to install his four dogs there.
It would seem that rather than winning the presidency for himself and his party, he won the re-election of the neoliberal former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), since the most important posts in his cabinet will be occupied by officials from Macrismo, on whom Milei depends entirely if he hopes to remove it if he hopes to move forward with any initiative in Congress. He has also integrated right-wing Peronism into his circle, where the Menem family comes from (the former president’s nephew will be president of the Chamber of Deputies).
It has been repeated that his electoral victory is the result of the “bronca” vote, that is, discontent with runaway inflation, devaluation and the loss of buying power accentuated during the four years of Alberto Fernández’s government.
But it is also a vote for amnesia, as Argentines have forgotten that the economic meltdown originated with the Macri government, which destroyed wages and contracted with the IMF a debt of 45 billion dollars that it handed over to speculators… and that Argentines will continue to suffer.
The IMF itself pointed out in a 2021 report that more than half of the largest loan it has ever granted in its history was used to finance capital flight. Warnings that the incoming administration will deregulate the economy and end exchange controls anticipate a new round of plunder through tax evasion, money laundering and currency speculation.
Milei’s message was predictable. So was his blackmail. His plans, however, will have to pass the test of the reality of a government that verbally says it has a lot of resolve but is beset by unknowns in Congress – we will have to see the negotiations with the blocs willing to give it “governability” – and in the social reality of large majorities that have been suffering years of adjustment.
On Sunday morning it seemed that the country was on the edge of the precipice. Will he have taken a step forward?
