The opposition realigned to vote together against Milei, while the President tries to overcome a foreseeable internal crisis.Cristina Kirchner has a clear strategic objective: for Javier Milei’s government to fail. The sooner the better. The de facto leader of the opposition coalition that is being consolidated from Congress, with more or less silent terminals in several provincial districts, never hid that objective. Instead, she suggested that it was best to let social anger flow, win, adjust, and pay the cost of adjustment.
From that foresight, Kirchnerism maximized the tactical advantage that being a majority in Congress gives it. For six months he feinted to to avoid the population’s disenchantment with politics, but at the same time use all the parliamentary chicanery at hand to prevent the new government from achieving laws essential to govern. He succeeded, to the point of also turning Milei’s intention of showing a scene of consensus with the provincial governors in May.
Once he obtained that trophy, he went one step further: Cristina put radicalism in her pocket to vote for a law to update pensions that puts the precarious fiscal balance in check which Milei achieved by dint of liquefaction of expenses and delay of payments. The President promised discretionary vetoes, but the political sign of very fragile governance was evident.
Was it only because of the design of this opposition strategy that Milei was left on the defensive? It would be inappropriate to say so. Milei imagines a conspiracy against her, which is the same one that Cristina barely hides (and only radicalism defends with textbook elusions and excuses), but it is necessary to analyze what Milei is doing to dismantle and efficiently confront this plot of mischief.
The answers do not favor it. Milei seems to be acting with bipolar reflexes: at times he acts as if the attack were irrelevant, at other times as if it were really significant. At times he gets angry and promises punishment; At times he lets it be known that he is not interested in the results. For the opposition strategy, nothing is more functional than this bipolarity of management.
Milei won by accelerating in the diaspora of a fragmented politics. Faced with a government of tolderías looting what was left; facing an opposition no less alienated in its internal dynamics. But Milei decided to begin his management without any effort to collect the scattered pieces to form a critical mass of governance. He decided to continue accelerating in a vacuum: he sent a huge law to the fragmented Congress. He needed at least delegated powers for the emergency and a precarious fiscal package, but he sent a project so ambitious that the opposition rubbed their hands. A delicacy for money seekers, specialists in tiring anxious governments.
Empty
Not only in the Legislative Branch did the government accelerate without traction. Also in his own house, the Executive Branch. Milei was not able to put together a team of officials suitable for a cyclopean task. She had no equipment of her own and rejected many of those offered by her military allies. last minute in the runoff. He also did not want to open spaces to aspects of the opposition that could collaborate, with a coalition effect in Congress.
In a certain sense, Milei, her sister Karina and her highest-ranking advisor, Santiago Caputo, made the same mistake as Mauricio Macri, Marcos Peña and Jaime Durán Barba in their beginnings: they confused the meaning of the vote that elevated them. A vote that gives change an opportunity is not the same as a vote that consecrates change as an already completed process. To this day, Marcos Peña cannot distinguish the difference.
In the case of Milei, the disorder it has in several management areas reveals the obvious: it is not on sunny days when leaks occur. Milei says that her former chief of staff, Nicolás Posse, it is now history, but no past is inconsequential: there was an error in the appointment and in the central management design of the Executive. He now tries to correct it, but cannot prevent the consequences of the mistake from becoming visible. There was valuable time wasted.
There is the ministry of Sandra Pettovello as an example: an administrative structure so extensive that it cannot be managed only with the marketing of the reduction of distributions or the complaints to the poverty managers. Simplifying ministries does not simplify the variety of their problems. Cristina Kirchner knows this perfectly. She still suffers the judicial effects of the gigantic structure that she delegated to Julio de Vido.
There is a third area where Milei’s acceleration was more damaging because it created a problem where none existed. The President allowed an agreement to appoint the controversial judge Ariel Lijo to the Supreme Court. Someone whispered in his ear that in this way he could achieve a majority in the nation’s highest court. If he believed in that siren song, the error will be entirely his. To be a judge, an objected applicant needs the betrayal of his mentor out of thin air.
Thus, the Argentine political system has entered a maelstrom of tensions: Milei accelerated in the face of the void of opposition fragmentation; The opposition is realigning, accelerating in the obvious gaps in the Milei administration.
The economy that will legitimize one or the other has begun to get nervous. He observes too much political precariousness, although orthodox discourses and unshakable surveys persist in supporting change. In the exchange market, the struggle between the liquidation of exports and the debate on the lag in the exchange rate is in full swing.
The Government anxiously awaits the May inflation rate to approach the sharp decline that it already showed in the City of Buenos Aires. It is the news that is urgently needed, to recover the valuable time lost in the field of politics.
