It's Tuesday night. From the presidential office of the Casa Rosada, with all the pomp that comes with power in a very presidential country like Argentina, Javier Milei raises his eyebrows during his last interview of the year, and drops the bomb. If Congress does not approve the megadecree with which he changes more than 300 laws without any type of discussion with anyone, he will call for a popular consultation, a plebiscite. The people against Congress. A classic of populism. “Explain to me why Congress is against something that is good for people. Because people understood well, eh?” Milei, who now has a lot of popular support, wants to crush with him any discrepancy, any counterpower. In case it was not clear, Milei concludes by accusing all those who are committed to debating a huge reform that completely turns around the entire Argentine economic system as corrupt. “Those who like discussion so much, discussing the comma, are because they are looking for bribes.” [sobornos]”.
The next day, Milei sends a omnibus law in which it demands that Congress give it all the powers in the things that it cannot, by the Constitution, change by decree: fiscal policy, electoral laws, privatizations, fundamental rights – the rule obliges to ask permission from the Government, which may deny, for any “meeting or demonstration” on the street with more than three people. Milei demands that they let him govern without Congress, without any counterpower, without opposition.
The common thread of his vision is very clear: the president represents the people, with his 56% electoral support, and Congress is the caste. If something goes wrong – and the inflation even higher than before with Milei's first measures indicates that many things will go wrong for millions of Argentines in the coming months – it will be the fault of Congress. The truth is that Milei has broad popular support, as almost always happens after an electoral victory, and he wants to take advantage of this moment of idyll to burst any political, union or social opposition.
Traditional Argentine politics, sheltered in Congress and the provinces, transmits a clear feeling of fear. Milei threatens to bring “the people” down on them, and no one wants to stand in front of that wave. Some of these politicians and trade unionists trust that time will do its job, and “the people” will abandon Milei as they see the devastating effects of his measures on their daily lives. Argentina is in the middle of summer, many are on vacation, but the moment of truth will come in March, when normal activity returns, those preparing the opposition to Milei trust.
The underlying problem is well studied and described in the book How democracies die (Ariel) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two Harvard professors. The text analyzes many cases of populism and conflicts of legitimacy, such as the one Milei is raising in Argentina, but there is one that is especially similar, with some substantial differences, of course, because any comparison is excessive: that of Peru. Alberto Fuijimori was, like Milei, a outsider of politics that in one year created a party and managed to win the 1990 elections to none other than Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner. Even the figures look similar. Milei achieved 30% in the first round and 56% in the second. Fujimori 29.9% and 62% in the second in 1990.
They both had the same problem: as in the United States, representatives are elected partly in midterm elections, in which they were still nobody, and partly in that first round, in which neither of them swept. That is why Fujimori had only 32 of the 180 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 14 of 62 in the Senate in 1990. Milei directly controls only 38 of the 257 deputies and seven of the 72 senators of Argentina, although he can count on a few more thanks to the support of Mauricio Macri. It took Fujimori nine days to announce his ultraliberal measures, which involved a large devaluation, privatization, liberalization and a strong impoverishment of Peruvians to control runaway inflation (2,775% in Peru then, 150% in Argentina before the change). Milei took five days. He was talked about fujishockand the word shock It is now the most repeated in Buenos Aires.
The president achieved enormous popular support and took advantage of it to charge against Congress. Frightened and with a very worn image of politics, Peruvian deputies gave special powers to the very popular Fujimori, but it was not enough. There was a great differentiating element that luckily Argentina does not have: Shining Path terrorism. Fujimori's heavy hand against them made him even more popular and after months blaming Congress for all the evils, he decided to close it in 1992 with a self-coup. And no one could stop him until the year 2000. Before, he had been in charge of destroying the unions, to weaken social protest, and of crushing the Peruvian political system, which never managed to recover and still suffers from the extreme weakness of the parties. and a permanent instability that led Pope Francis to ask in 2018, when he visited Lima: what is happening in Peru that all presidents end up in jail?
The question now is whether Milei will want to continue this trail of confrontation with Congress until he becomes a new Fujimori, or if he will stop before or if he will be stopped. Argentina and Peru are two very different countries, due to history, social structures, and economic realities. In Peru, the unions were already weak when Fujimori arrived, who finished them off. In Argentina they are among the most powerful in the world. The matches in Peru were already very close in 1990 – that allowed the second round to actually be between two outsiders like Fujimori and Vargas Llosa–. Peronism emerges wounded from the elections, but still retains a lot of strength and local power: it governs the colossal province of Buenos Aires.
Furthermore, in Argentina there are many more counterpowers, among them some sectors of the press, including the conservative one, that are asking a question that is valid for Argentina but also for those in Spain – ironically included Vargas Llosa himself – who blindly support Milei: what What if Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had changed 300 laws with a single decree without consulting anyone? What would happen if Pedro Sánchez demanded from Congress full powers to change by decree and without any pandemic the fundamental rights of protest, the electoral law or the controversial amnesty law? Both Fernández de Kirchner and Sánchez, like other political leaders, made and make many decrees. They openly abuse them. But no one had turned the country around in a single decree that changes everything without any type of consultation with unions, businessmen or affected sectors, nor had they asked for two years – extendable to four – of open bar to govern without opposition.
It is therefore unlikely that Argentina will follow the path of Peru, because the counterpowers are stronger. But the dialectic that Milei proposes is very similar to that of the first Fujimori, and both had a lot of popular support to break any type of opposition. The question is until when. Making predictions in Argentina always means being wrong, as Milei has just demonstrated by sneaking into the Casa Rosada before the astonished gaze of the discredited traditional political class. But everything indicates that the litmus test comes in March, when the summer ends. Until then, get ready for a shock permanent that does not even leave time to analyze the dimensions of the challenge of a man who always takes care of his gestures and started his mandate with a very clear one: his first speech was on the street, turning his back on Congress, and not inside, before the deputies , as usual. We know how it starts. It remains to be seen how it ends.
Subscribe here to newsletter from EL PAÍS América and receive all the key information on current events in the region.
Limited time special offer
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Milei #Fujimori