Before his speech opening the legislative sessions, Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei argued that “as long as Congress has its current composition, we believe it will be difficult to pass reforms,” leaving the impression that he plans to rule by decree, bypassing the institutions.
Milei played down the impact of his adjustment by trying to dispel doubts about the stability that international organizations insist on: “There is no chance of a social uprising unless there is a politically motivated event or foreign infiltrators”.
For a week, Argentina witnessed an unprecedented escalation that pitted the Milei government against almost all of the country’s governors over the withholding of co-participation funds from the Patagonian province of Chubut.
The provincial governor, Ignacio Torres (of Propuesta Republicana, a neo-liberal party allied to Milei), replied that “if they don’t take their hands off us by Wednesday, not a single barrel of oil will come out of Chubut for Argentina”.
But the clash did not happen, and the oil continued to flow: a court ruling (by a judge in Rawson, Chubut’s capital) ordered the national government to “stop withholding funds” until progress was made “in refinancing the debt”.
This will certainly not be the first or last time that the judiciary intervenes in this hot political scenario. The ruling gave Torres some breathing space to avoid carrying out a threat that he probably did not want to and could not carry out.
Milei, from the social network of his friend Elon Musk (to whom he has already granted access to satellite telephony and promised him lithium), had supported a discriminatory publication that sought to mock Torres by portraying him in a photo with the features of a person with Down’s syndrome.
How much hatred can there be in a person who tweets mockingly laughing at a boy with Down’s syndrome? What could have happened in this person’s life to create so much hatred and resentment?” asked Torres. “This Argentina will never move forward if we put imaginary enemies in the ring to stir up hatred and contempt in order to take real problems off the agenda,” the governor replied.
For her part, the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, did not want to lose the limelight after the failure of the idea of forming a government with the neo-liberal Mauricio Macri, and brutally disqualified all the people of Chubut. The repressive minister and president of the PRO attacked the governor, pointing out that “nobody lives in Chubut, there are a million guanacos” (an artiodactyl mammal of the camel family, native to Patagonia), according to the minister.
Milei insists on his provocative strategy, with the obvious aim of focusing the public agenda on trivialities, on irrelevant issues, and distracting public opinion from the serious facts that his government generates. His public fight with Lali Espósito managed to win over people who didn’t even know her songs. Lali wasn’t intimidated: at the Cosquín Rock Festival she dedicated “¿Quiénes son?” to “the liars, the scoundrels, the bad people, those who don’t value anything, the anti-patriots”.
Concerns
A contest of absurdities seems to be taking place in Argentina, with the Mileinista government winning by far, while senior US and International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials fear that this bombardment of austerity and other repressive measures to calm dissent will not end in a social explosion or the balkanization of the country.
Argentines still remember the 2001 outbreak of a political, economic, social and institutional crisis that led to a widespread popular uprising under the slogan “Let them all go” and the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa, who left the Casa Rosada by helicopter. The outbreak was followed by a period of instability: five people became president in the space of a few months.
A few days later, after a visit to the country and a meeting with the libertarian president (but also with military, business and trade union leaders), the IMF’s deputy managing director, the Indian American economist and academic Gita Gopinath, questioned the dollarization promoted – at least in words – by President Milei when assessing and analyzing his economic program.
Yes, some of the talks between the Americans and IMF officials with local politicians, businessmen, exporters, representatives of the banks and investment funds eager to take over the Argentine wealth that Milei promised to privatize, have been transcribed, but little was known about the talks with the military, in which Vice-President Victoria Villarruel, who has been close to the military commanders since the time of the genocidal civilian-military dictatorship, did not participate.
“For any exchange rate regime, including dollarization, you need good preconditions (…) you need a sufficient number of reserves and a good macroeconomic policy framework,” said Gita Gopinath, warning that “what we see from the experience of other countries is that dollarization does not solve all the problems”. “If you don’t have fiscal discipline, even if you dollarize, you can end up having problems if you are not able to control and contain your fiscal policy, so it’s not a panacea,” she said.
“Confidential, a monthly newsletter that usually reaches foreign embassies, notes that the idea of the consulted military would be to “intervene only if there is an uprising or a social or subversive outbreak”. What worries the US (and other European) governments, and the IMF is the impoverishment and destabilization caused by the government’s regressive economic measures.
From Rome, Pope Francis sent a message to judges in Argentina, asserting that the state “is called to exercise that central role of redistribution and social justice” that is “more important than ever”, while warning against “dehumanizing and violent models” and insisting that in public office “the legitimacy of origin is not enough”.
“Social rights are not free. The wealth to support them is there, but it requires adequate, rational and just political choices,” the Pope said. For his part, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said that in the government “we respect and listen to the words of Pope Francis”, but pointed out that “we do not agree with some of them and it is very good that this is the case”.
Continuing the string of libertarian nonsense, Adorni surprised (some) by announcing on Tuesday that Milei had ordered “the elimination of the use of inclusive language in the state” and everything “related to the gender perspective in public administration”.
Sometimes the government’s systems for leaking economic information to paid accounts on the social network X go into crisis, as happened with a message that Milei himself had to deny the pre-announcement of an imminent dollarization, with the opening of the Cepro, a bank holiday and a corralito.
Almost everything mentioned in the report by Emilio Raiden, Milei’s informal adviser on economic matters, is being discussed not only in the Ministry of Finance, but also with the IMF authorities and above all with the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo. But for a government that has no foreign currency and is under constant pressure to devalue again, the data were explosive.
“Sorry, President, it was an expression of desire,” wrote Raiden on his X account, after being pressured by the uproar caused by his message. But the effects had already been felt.
Their troll and bot farms are trying to create a collective vision that the government is comfortable in the conflict, and that to back down or give in would be to lose the initiative and disillusion their electoral base. And they fear their power will be liquefied in negotiations where they stand to lose.
Milei wants to perpetuate the image of the lion ready to do anything with the presidential pen to compensate for all his other weaknesses, on the premise that what goes well is his merit and what goes wrong is surely the fault of “the caste”. This adventurous policy has no guarantee against failure, and it is feared that a major conflict or social discontent could get out of hand…
