Votes from the Peronists were added to that. Carolina Moisés (Jujuy), Guillermo Andrada (Catamarca) and Sandra Mendoza (Tucumán) in favor of the Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI). They explained that they will be beneficial for their provinces. Later they received reproaches from leaders close to the former president.
Such articulation in the vote showed the skill and pragmatism of the ruling party, but it also clearly established the roles and left questions floating inward. Did Peronism do enough to block the approval of the law? For now, the conversations that he had started with Lousteau to vote on some of the core proposals of his opinion were left halfway. There were those who said that Christianity did not want to give it so much prominence.
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Martín Lousteau differentiated himself from his bloc and voted against the basic law, along with Peronism.
The idea is widespread in the opposition that, after the sanction, Milei will have no more excuses to govern. She begins the countdown, the moment of truth. “The important thing is that Peronism showed a very compact attitude,” they say in Kirchnerism. What if the Government gets the dollars it needs to steady the ship?
Now, the opposition’s eye is no longer on lowering inflation – a fight in which Milei showed positive results this week – but on the social crisis and the increase in unemployment that will be seen in the coming months, tied to the growth of problems such as child malnutrition, addictions and crime that leaders in the territory already report. There is a new milestone in history: August or September, opposition figures say, is the deadline to see society’s ability to withstand the mileist experiment.
Meanwhile, confusion reigns among the senior staff of the Peronist leadership who observe how deeply libertarian ideas have penetrated the citizens. A change in the ideological matrix that is here to stay beyond Milei and that poses new challenges to leadership.
The return of Sergio Massa
In the shadows, Massa operated until the last moment to block approval in the Senate. He spoke with governors, met with Lousteau, tried until midnight to reverse the votes of Kueider and Espínola, with whom he had already articulated the rejection of DNU 70/2023, in February. The former presidential candidate played, above all, to ensure that the delegated powers were not approved.
With the man from Entre Ríos he made direct negotiations and via Gustavo Bordet, promoter of Kueider’s candidacy for senator in 2019. Espínola received calls from the CGT. There was no case.
The deputy Cecilia Moreau, Massa’s right-hand man, whitewashed the anger expressed the afternoon before the vote. “There is a lot of talk about Lousteau, but here we have two senators who entered with the UP ticket and who are going to vote in favor. They are going to become traitors to the country,” he said in Futurerock.
UP’s anger with Kueider and Espínola goes back a long way. In February 2023, they broke the Frente de Todos block to form their own bench. They said they had been denounced as “Albertistas” by the Christian wing of the bloc. A year earlier they had voted in favor of the agreement with the IMF. On the day of the breakup they sent messages waiting for some gesture of containment. Massa, who was not yet a presidential candidate, tried to bridge the gap from a trip abroad. It was late.
With Espínola, the resentment has been going on for years. In 2015, she headed the list of candidates for the Front for Victory for the Senate along with the camper. Ana Almiron but, after the triumph of Mauricio Macri, he rallied behind the anti-Christian group that he led Miguel Ángel Pichetto. Six years later, Espínola and Almirón headed the same ballot. The definition of the candidacy was the result of an agreement that was closed Peter’s Wado, Maximo Kirchner, Massa and Juan Zabaleta, at that time intervener of the Corrientes PJ sent by Alberto Fernandez. The closure caused anger in the most Kirchnerist sectors of the Corrientes PJ, even in La Cámpora, and had the endorsement of Cristina.
Less than two years later, the man from Corrientes broke the block again. After the vote on the basic law, Christianity targeted Fernández for supposedly having been a promoter of his candidacy. The former president came out to clarify that he had nothing to do with it. “Now it turns out that Alberto had so much power that he nominated all the candidates? “Who can believe that?”, a Kirchnerist who asks for opening in the Patria Institute and thinks that Cristina is “increasingly locked in La Cámpora” as his political core got angry.
On the sidelines, the idea circulates in UP that Massa had more at stake than the rest of the leadership in the omnibus law party. An early failure by Milei would highlight the warnings of the leader of the Frente Renovador during the campaign and, perhaps, an operational outcry. Massa measures the times of his reappearance. He will soon present a book that promises to generate a lot of internal noise: it will reveal negotiations from his time as minister, including with businessmen. Is he preparing to be a candidate for deputy in 2025?
Cristina, on the other hand, privately let it be known that she is worried that Milei’s frustration will lead to an institutional disaster and a resignation that leaves power in the hands of Victoria Villarruel. The vice president showed signs of her desire for prominence the night the law was approved when she gave a speech outside the regulations and maintained a strong confrontation with De Pedro.
In parallel, signals arrived from Rome. The Senate was still in session when the Pope Francisco he received, smiling, Axel Kicillof Thursday morning, in Rome. The meeting had been agreed upon months in advance and coincided, by divine chance, with voting day in Congress. In the afternoon, Kicillof and Francisco saw each other again, this time for a period of two hours. The second meeting was an exception to the rules promoted by the Supreme Pontiff that was read in Peronism, without nuances, as a clear political message towards the Milei government and also towards the UP internal party, while Kicillof steadily builds his presidential candidacy. , in the midst of tensions with La Cámpora and an agreement between cottons with Massa.
The role play of CFK and Javier Milei
The difference in criteria within UP was also evident during the debate over the new retirement mobility law. In Deputies, the bloc went through a strong discussion when the Campista line raised its initial refusal to join the opinion promoted by radicalism, the Pichetto bloc and the Civic Coalition, which finally voted. “The Troskean,” they complained indoors in reference to Kirchner’s wing.
The negotiations became tense and the criteria of the most dialogue wing prevailed, where they noted, among others, Victoria Tolosa Paz, Leandro Santoro and deputies who respond to Massa. The president of the block, German Martinez, also accompanies this position, although it seeks to mediate between sectors to maintain internal balance. Others who do not show their heads so much in public ask to open more agreements and give concrete answers to the electorate. They confess to being disoriented due to the lack of political line.
The other blocks perceive the tensions. The battle “pragmatists versus dogmatists.” Tolosa Paz has already put together a fluid back-and-forth with Pichetto, who also speaks frequently with Massa. They talked during the session about retirement mobility. All sectors agree in pointing out as the great articulator of the agreement Nicolas Massot, that the mediation between UP, the radicals and the Civic Coalition was ruined. “The issue is that, if you articulate with others, you stop being the leader,” analyze non-campaign UP leaders who want to expand the dialogues.
For this reason, in the lower house it was funny when the President said that the agreement reached by the different opposition blocks to approve the new retirement mobility formula was a “parliamentary trap set up by Máximo Kirchner.” A much more convenient version for the ruling party than admitting a large opposition arming. Elisa Carrió He says they are too functional with each other. He points to what will happen in the coming weeks in the Senate with the list of Ariel Lijo, the Government’s candidate to occupy a seat on the Supreme Court, who will most likely be voted for by the UP bench. It will be a striking coincidence and difficult to explain even more so after the battle over the Bases law.
For now, this week the UP deputies will seek to put Milei in trouble in front of the international community with the complaint they will make before the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). ) for the repression against Congress. Cristina and Massa agreed on this occasion to give it the green light.
