Javier Milei closed the first section of his mandate on Friday, dedicated to: 1) jibarizing the powers that, in his opinion, obscure the legitimacy of his management; 2) build a party platform that gives him sustainability in office.
The first reason explains the use of the DNU/70 projects and the omnibus law as missile weapons. They were prepared by the Cambiemos teams, they had a favorable reception at the Congress for their content, but He refused to negotiate his approval, which would not have been difficult to obtain.
He preferred that they be demolished in the Justice (DNU) and in the Deputation to polarize and gain muscle. He preferred the aesthetics and logic of comparison to the interest in approving the measures proposed in those projects. He weighed the effects of the contradiction more.
His interest was power over the public interest. In the first three months he focused his fire on Congress, which he denied a role in the business of governing. With the same emphasis he tried to compose a party base that would allow him to overcome the lack of a political structure.
The set of his actions in this sense allows us to warn of his intention to dismantle the PRO and to demonstrate to his militants that he is a better leader than Mauricio Macri. First of all because he is president and Macri is at home.
It’s a devastating message for the political professionals surrounding the president. They see in Milei a loner without a party, without a program, without a team, without legislators, without a territory and without governors and with nothing to lose. A self-employed worker who doesn’t have to answer to anyone for what he does.
Its strength lies in the fragility of its base. But he needs cadres to govern him like water. As has happened other times with weak governments, Just show up at the ticket office to get a seat.
Milei taught Ritondo
The attempt to put together their own party structure is the outline of a strategy for the 2025 legislative elections. For this reason, Milei and Macri – or those who advise them on party issues, which are not their strong point – believe that should meet.
No matter how much they flirt with approaches and rejections, that confluence exists in the electorate that added 29% of Patricia’s vote in the first round and made Milei president.
The president raises his hat in confusion. He is a pyrotechnic stylist, which exploits the reaction economy, which seeks to shock the bourgeois so that the old aunts say “what a scandal” and generate visibility. One of these gestures is inviting Cristian Ritondo and not Macri to lunch. Since you were feeding, how did you respond to the discrimination? Milei sat him down in his office and barely let him speak. He gave a lesson that the cold of the room – designed for the mortification of the visitor – made it seem eternal.
He told him in detail the accounting utopia of the conservatives (that Argentina was the best from 1860 to 1930) and revealed the crystal ball to him. A cruelty for Ritondo, who understands that the best years were those of Peronism, which overcame the shortcomings of the conservative regime.
You want to eat the PRO
Milei explained to him that in 2025 La Libertad Avanza will have more votes than Peronism – Milei uses the word “kirchnerismo”, thus exposing the matrix of his interpretations – and that Peronism will have more votes than the PRO. The conclusion was this If they go to the elections together they can win 60% together.
Ritondo took note of the message: the fact that Macri is president of the PRO will not save his party from disappearing. This is the hypothesis supported by Patricia Bullrich. Ritondo is, together with Jorge Macri, who negotiates on behalf of Macri with Patricia the terms of the PRO unit under the guidance of the engineer.
On this occasion, Ritondo spoke with the PRO bloc – which resents the internalism that Milei instills in them by waving the ring of accusations – during a dinner on Thursday evening at the “El Auge” grill, a sanctuary for conspiracies in Buenos Aires. in the neighborhood legislative.
Drip of discredit
Milei’s efforts to jibarize the PRO and show himself as a better leader than Macri of a right-wing force have come at a high cost within the ruling party. It produces a drop of discredit this does not come to light in a scenario distracted by audiovisual communicators who dedicate themselves to commenting on tweets and repeating that they do not understand Milei, as if it were a mystery.
The resignation of Sebastián García de Luca, deputy minister of Security and political arm of Patricia Bullrich, was a serious blow. He was the architect of Patricia’s presidential candidacy and in the Macrista government he was Rogelio Frigerio’s deputy minister of the Interior. He is, through that function, responsible for Milei being president.
He resigned from his position because he believes that management is out of control and that the ruling party lacks governance tools. The peak of tension occurred in the context of the clash between the Executive and the governors. De Luca is active in an ethnic group shared by Frigerio, governor of Entre Ríos, and deputies Nicolás Massot and Emilio Monzó. Until this weekend De Luca had received half a thousand messages of support from activists in his sector who praised his gesture.
Among these, the majority of governors. Another notable loss was that of Diego Marías, from the team of auditors of the Public Media body. He was a Buenos Aires deputy for the PRO and represented his party in the Judicial Council.
He recognizes himself as a Macrist, he identifies himself among those who must support the government, but he does not share the working method of the intervention, in a more than delicate sector such as that of the administration of state media.
Ministers under scrutiny
The legislative year is the real beginning of Milei management. Until now everything was a dress rehearsal with clothes and lights (as they say at Colón) which took place in that limbo that are extraordinary sessions. It is the period in which the executive power can afford to impose the agenda of the issues to be discussed. It is a moment of exception that serves as a sofa for any government’s fantasies.
If the government were to be subjected to an evaluation commission, its evaluation would be disastrous.. The omnibus law bounced in the blindex of the Deputies, despite having obtained a general sanction with 144 votes, and lost validity with an irresponsible movement of the commissions, due to ignorance of the rules by the legislators of the governing party. On the bench of the Bicameral Commission is DNU 70.
On Thursday, the plenary session of this body convened the ministerial secretaries responsible for all areas of government to illustrate its contents. All the blocs approved it, including the legislators of La Libertad Avanza. The summons appears to be mandatory and the Commission authorities have the power to remove those summoned by force.
The presence of Federico Sturzenegger has not been resolved, to whom the texts of the two megaprojects are attributed, which he developed with the Cambiemos teams for the candidates of that force. He does not yet have a designation and his responsibilities appear in videos and newspaper reports.
The “normals” react
The sessions of the bicameral commission begin on Tuesday, in parallel with the request of opposition senators to convene an extraordinary session to discuss DNU 70. The intention is to repeal it adding the Peronist legislators and a group of provincials.
What comes next depends on the government’s mood. If he persisted in the debate, he would waste the support of many legislators for the reforms contained in this bill and in the omnibus law. They no longer know how to support them in the face of criticism from the Executive. If they insist on this path, the Senate will overthrow the DNU and leave the government with fewer tools for action.
The “normal” sector of deputies, whose axis is the Hacemos bloc chaired by Miguel Pichetto, presented a reaction to this repeal on Friday, in a meeting of the bloc before the opening of the legislative year.
The strategy is to work to create an alliance with other sectors of Congress, which expands the number of 23 it has today, adding radicals, PRO and provincial dissidents, to try to address the reforms contained in the DNU and in the omnibus law that they believe appropriate.
After all, Milei does not have the texts, which were written by the Cambiemos teams for the candidates excluded from the vote. Milei plays music that reveals his interest in building power rather than working on reality within the republican system.
He has wasted the support of those who do not even see that his purpose is the defense of his private interest, not the public interest. This precedence is not exclusive to him. We come from a government like that of Peronism that came out in 2023 in which its leaders have privileged their private interest and postponed the public one.
The proof is the dissipation of power that the Fernández have done, the same thing that Milei is doing now. Power is a public good, which belongs to society. It organizes its representatives to defend the public interest. Bad governance favors governance over management, blind to the truth that without management, no governance is possible.
They revive the “mirror law”
The “normal” strategy has two alternatives. One, which seems served, is let’s take the idea of the radical senator Carolina Losada to try a law that copy-paste the DNU 70. It is called the “mirror law” and was presented to the Chamber. Those who agree with many of these reforms have the possibility, with this stratagem, to do Mileism without Milei.
The list of these initiatives was made by Nicolás Massot, member of Hacemos and member of the Bicameral, and places emphasis on labor reform. Bringing Losada’s mirror law to the deputies, in the event that the Senate repeals the DNU, is not difficult, because a similar initiative was presented by the radical Martín Tetaz.
The Losada project had the approval of Victoria Villarruel in the Upper House, but Milei himself froze it. On January 12, Losada had a long meeting with the president at the Casa Rosada, but he rejected the idea of the mirror law which the senator from Santa Fe defended with his arguments and those of one of his advisors, the lawyer Feliz Lonigro. Milei argued the need for the DNU before her.
Proof of his preferential option for confrontation and venting. Losada failed to convince him that he would be the victim of justice and Congress, as is happening.
Govern by Congress
The other alternative put forward on Friday at the Hacemos bloc meeting is to do move forward this week with a series of projects arising from the abolition of the omnibus law and the DNU, and subject them to changes that have consensus.
It is the way to start governing from Congress, in the face of a government that ignores it and understands that it can do everything by decree, a fragile and unsustainable instrument. The first is for a labor reform in the terms proposed by the government.
These are a handful of initiatives already proposed in the Together for Change government between 2015 and 2019, and which had the support of an important sector of trade unionism. Another project is to improve the pension update formulaprepared by the deputies of the Elisa Carrió Civic Coalition.
Another is for the improvement of the Incentive Fund for teachers – which the government is trying to cut – presented by Margarita Stolbizer. Another of Massot’s projects is to reform the law on the treatment of DNUs, to remove them from that limbo that favors decision-making.
A law requires sanctions from both Houses, but today a DNU is valid if no one discusses it or if only one House approves it. Ricardo López Murphy is also preparing, together with the secretary of the bloc, Oscar Agost Carreño, a tax reform project.
Source: Clarin
