Javier Milei’s government closed a brilliant week measured in political achievements. The approval of the Base Law was followed by the inflation figure of 4.2%, the extension of the swap with China and the approval of the eighth tranche of the IMF review, with a disbursement of 800 million dollars. Although the president, as he himself acknowledges, looks centrally at the macro numbers of the economy, the political hand of Guillermo Francos was the one that began to build the institutional solidity that the libertarian administration did not come with from the factory.
This Executive, beyond its insistence, does not seem to need laws to advance the bulk of its program. This is demonstrated by the thickness of the law, which began as a refounding text and ended as a school communications notebook. The rhetorical fight that Milei practices against legislators only seems to be the fuel of a libertarian narrative that needs to buy time in moral diatribes while waiting for the “green shoots.”
The week that ended returned an image of political rationality in terms of understandings and agreements between the different levels of government. Governors and parties were able to find a space to express their needs and positions regarding the priorities of the national Executive. A place that until now had not shown any degree of virtuosity.
Politics is not good or bad, it depends on men and women and the circumstances.
From that vertex, scenes of the lowest level of politics of perks and unprincipled opportunism also appeared. In this act there were several representatives who ended up dragged into the mud of suspicion. One of them was the Neuquén senator Lucila Crexell.
Crexell came to the Senate in 2013 thanks to the recently deceased Guillermo Pereyra, who won with a violent internal campaign against Jorge Sapag’s candidate -Ana Pechen- and then, exploiting her anti-Sapagism by criticizing her alignment with Cristina Kircher and her opposition. to the YPF-Chevron agreement, won the legislative elections.
In 2019, Crexell once again confronted Kirchnerism by joining Together for Change with Horacio Quiroga, once again distanced from her uncle (Sapag) and Governor Omar Gutiérrez, but without disaffiliating from the MPN. Her seat was ratified by the Supreme Court since she replaced Quiroga, who died in October of that year.
The Neuquén senator, who broke with Pereyra and never gained a foothold in JxC – which claimed her seat – always cultivated an individualistic profile and although she showed an approach to Rolando Figueroa – she put together a one-person bloc which she called Comunidad, like the governor’s party -, mutual mistrust was evident this week. When it was leaked that Milei agreed to nominate her for the UNESCO embassy in Paris, the legislator came out to say that her vote was agreed with Figueroa, however, – leakage of the letter of intent through – she voted in favor of replacing Profits, something that The Neuquén governor publicly rejected it several times.
The vote, which can confirm conspiracy theories or be read as a vote for revenge, falls on a sensitive issue for Patagonia. It is the region that will suffer, beyond the zone differential, the greatest impact with the restoration of the tax. One of the most affected sectors will be the Neuquén oil workers, a province that gave strong support to Milei with 60% of the votes.
Beyond the previous one, Crexell’s vote on this point has a certain rationality. The name of the tax is very unfriendly, but the truth is that it is one of the most progressive taxes and is applied in most countries in the world. In this case, in addition to contradicting the principles of the government itself, it seems to respond more to a commitment by the Nation to sending money to other provinces with tax justice. And as things stand today, the Patagonians will once again offer a great federal effort that they rarely see compensated.
