Milei applies the manuals of “the caste”

Six months after assuming the Presidency, Javier Milei faces the first major scandal of his administration. He combines official apathy and cynicism, triangulation of funds and dollar bonuses to officials, and hunger among many Argentines. But as if all this were not enough, it includes something else: the reaction of Milei, who arrived at the Casa Rosada denouncing the “caste”, although she perfectly complies with the manual of everything that a member of the “caste” must. do when you are in trouble.

The storm began to brew weeks ago, when the mega-ministry of Human Capital denied time and time again that it was retaining food in its warehouses while there are many Argentines – in particular, children – who are hungry. Not only did he deny it; He dedicated himself to vilifying those who warned that the merchandise was about to spoil, including complete batches of milk, and urged its distribution among soup kitchens in the most needy areas. But in the end, after a criminal complaint by social leader Juan Grabois and the intervention of Justice, the Government had to recognize that yes, it was true, that there was food lying in warehouses… and that it was about to expire.

Then came (failed) damage control. Once the storm was unleashed, the person in charge of that mega-ministry – and the President’s most trusted bishop -, Sandra Pettovello, tried to detach herself from the scandal. For that, she admitted the situation, ordered the distribution of 5,000 tons of food that was stored and threw one of her collaborators, Pablo de la Torre, to the lions. She reported him to the Court and to the Anti-Corruption Office. She accused him of setting up a triangulation of funds within the Ministry to hire employees through an international organization and pay bonuses in dollars to those and other employees, without her (of course) knowing. But the storm, far from subsiding, became a hurricane. Because Justice verified that the information that the Government had given it about the merchandise stored in warehouses had more holes than a Gruyere cheese and because it came to light that lawyers and armed Government guards pressured a subordinate of De la Torre to incriminate to whom he had been his boss until a few hours ago.

Then came Milei’s (bad) reaction. The President who ascended to the Presidency by subsuming the entire political class within a “caste”, accusing it of focusing on its own interests, disconnected from society, and protecting its members at all costs to the detriment of the general interest, ended up embodying which could be the vademecum of reactions of a professional politician, a populist… or an icon of the caste.

First, he defended Sandra Pettovello despite her obvious lies, the attacks that occurred under her command in Capital Humano and her reactions – in fact, her inaction – as the proposals, complaints and complaints regarding food were added. that should have been distributed. Far from letting go of her hand – as she did with the 39 officials she did fire during these six months of administration – he praised her to stratospheric levels. “She is the best minister in history,” she stated.

Second, he denied the obvious. “No food arrived late,” Milei said when asked by the press, at a time when the Argentine Justice ordered Pettovello to present, within a peremptory period of 24 hours, a food distribution plan with details on “type, amount, expiration date and target group”, which also informed him that he must execute “immediately”.

Third, he fought back. If the “caste” manual says that there is no better defense than a good attack, Milei can cover that item. “The Kirchnerists have corruption with the dirty deals they did,” he replied when the press asked him for explanations, and then launched another great statement, without details: “We are going to be implacable with corruption, in all its lines.”

And finally, he got into trouble with the press. Yes, the anarcho-capitalist who hurls insults and verbal attacks, who considers those who evade and flee money from the country to be “heroes,” and who considers it valid and normal to travel to Madrid to brand the wife of the president of the Spanish Government as “corrupt,” set another, much stricter, bar for evaluating the press. Conclusion? The Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, filed a criminal complaint against journalists Nancy Pazos and Darío Villarruel for alleged “instigation to commit crimes.”

Defending those close to you, denying the obvious, counterattacking by going off on tangents, launching big and ethereal promises, applying different standards of evaluation for your own and others, and lashing out at journalists… sounds a lot like the manual of a classic politician, right? And all this, in a country where it was known this week that 55% of Argentines are poor. There are twenty-five million people.

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