Javier Milei usually uses a discursive formula to attract the interest of those who listen to him abroad. He says that he comes from the future to tell that governments with collectivist ideology are destined to fail and only manage to further impoverish those who vote for them. Although it attracts attention, this narrative has two fragile points. For Europeans or Americans who faced the worst collectivist experiments until the Berlin Wall was overturned, there is nothing new in the story. In any case, they are attracted by the point that many of their own voters have forgotten it. The second weak point is that where he governs, Milei only took the first steps to reverse the failure he describes. She can only be shown as an example when she definitively surpasses what she inherited.
Milei’s international prominence should not confuse indoors. In the acts of government, which are those that centrally interest Argentines, Milei has achieved some early, but provisional, favorable economic results. And laborious but unfinished political achievements. Among the first, we must note the decline in inflation at a faster rate than expected. Among the latter, the approval of the Bases law, whose tax package is advancing slowly.
The sanction of that law implied a traumatic review for the President: the replacement in the Chief of Staff. Everything indicates that this review has not been completed. The President himself fuels that perspective by maintaining expectations for the entry of Federico Sturzenegger. Sturzenegger is the mastermind of the Government’s regulatory maximalism. An intellectual object that had contradictory value: it positively cleared up the markets’ doubts about shock or gradualism, but it led to the six-month parliamentary blockade suffered by the ruling party. Hence, his incorporation as a minister implies a challenge regarding the contours of his ministry.
The most relevant thing underlying the intrigues over the role of the new minister is the extent to which Milei considers it necessary to reset the economic program before it begins to show cracks that fuel unfavorable expectations. There are several delicate points. Inflation fell more than expected but with heterodoxies applied to rates. These doubts that are projected on the fiscal anchor are even less decisive than those that await a response in the exchange market. Milei can speak about economic freedom in any academy that allows him, but he has not yet shown an exit plan for the dollar clampdown.
According to the Government, the remaining procedures for the complete sanction of the Bases law, with tax agreement included, continue to advance and Milei rescheduled the deadline for July 9. It should then be presumed that the Ministry of Economy has already designed its exit scheme from the stocks, without inflationary impact.
For Caputo, getting out of the stocks has become a central challenge. It includes complex variables: the immediate expectations of revenue from exports, the negotiations of a new program with the IMF, the plan to recompose the reserves. And also Milei’s political promises; especially the monetary illusion about dollarization.
Restless courts
The need to recalibrate the Government after the first half of the year is not limited to the economy. Parliamentary pressure gave way due to Kirchnerism’s strategic error in trying – again – to overturn a legislative session by setting Congress on fire. But a conflict awaits Milei with another power, with more delicate manners. That conflict is the one that opened with Justice when attempting a populist approach to the Supreme Court. The document of Judge Ariel Lijo, the key factor chosen by Milei to build his own majority in the highest court of the Nation, expects in the Senate the same votes that the Government requested for the Bases law and was not given.
The erratic signal that Milei sent to the courts is projected on the task of an establishment like that of judges, accustomed to deciphering the changing winds of politics. In a short time, the Criminal Cassation Chamber issued two rulings for the policy to digest. First was the decision in the Amia case, in which the Iranian State was held responsible for the terrorist attack. Then he resolved the Cuadernos case, where the cream of local economic power was exposed by paying bribes during the times of Kirchnerist hegemony. With that ruling, the Court of Cassation favored businessman Angelo Calcaterra, cousin of Mauricio Macri, who admitted the payment by his company of fresh funds in the form of contributions to the electoral campaign.
You have to imagine the garage of the Hilton hotel, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Puerto Madero. According to Calcaterra, in that dimly lit section, hardly comfortable for a licit operation, the money was delivered to the Kirchner family collectors. The Chamber assumes the presumption that this operation did not have any public works award as a correlate. But above all, by turning the proceedings over to the electoral justice system, the ruling prevents an oral and public trial from It is clarified whether that consideration existed.
Faced with this decision, Milei faces an irremediable problem. She will not be able to present herself as a plaintiff through her Minister of Justice. For the same reasons as in the Amia ruling, where she had to turn to Patricia Bullrich.
It happens that Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona, also in this case, is prevented from intervening due to his professional background. In the case Amia was the sponsor of Commissioner Juan José Ribelli (the judge who decided on that circumstance was Ariel Lijo). Regarding the Cuadernos cause he also acted as a defender. He was the lawyer of businessman Hugo Eurnekián, nephew of Eduardo, former boss of Milei.
Caste is a territory of diffuse boundaries.
