The three consecutive defeats suffered by Javier Milei’s government in Congress last week were the result of a growing internal dispute between pro-government legislators. In the Chamber of Deputies and also in the Senate, the La Libertad Avanza blocs – Milei’s party – are the scene of cross accusations, positions contrary to the Executive, allegations of violence and possible expulsions. The atmosphere of tension is completed by Milei’s conflicts with two allies who were key to his electoral victory, Vice President Victoria Villarruel and former President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019). Last Friday, Milei dedicated a phrase to Macri that cast doubt on the former president’s ability to control his party’s legislators: “Either he does not manage the troops, or the troops do not understand the damage he is doing,” he said, with words that threaten to put him in front of a mirror.
Complaints in the House of Representatives
The La Libertad Avanza group of deputies has been embroiled in a scandal for a month due to the visit that six legislators made to the Ezeiza prison to meet with repressors detained for murders, torture and kidnappings committed during the last dictatorship (1976-1983). The meeting was repudiated by human rights organizations, by the opposition and even by sectors of the ruling party.
Milei himself had to respond on the subject on Friday. “That is not my agenda,” he told Radio Rivadavia about the visit to criminals such as Alfredo Astiz, one of the symbols of human rights violations during the military dictatorship. When asked about the possible intervention of the vice president, Milei replied: “I don’t know if she had anything to do with this. We’ll have to see.” Coming from a military family, Villarruel is one of the visible faces of the denialist discourse that seeks to establish that in Argentina there was a civil war in the 1970s and not state terrorism.
The Government’s strategy was, from the outset, to limit the responsibility for the trip to Ezeiza to the six participating legislators. But the conflict escalated when it became known that the transfer to the prison was carried out in an official vehicle of the Chamber of Deputies and when the efforts of the Ministry of Security to organize the entry into the prison became known. It went up a notch when two of the deputies involved publicly said that their colleagues in the block had deceived them, that they had invited them to an “institutional and humanitarian” tour and that they had been forced to leave the prison. who did not know who they were going to meet. And it finally exploded on Sunday, when one of them revealed the reason behind the visit: to promote the release of criminals against humanity.
The deputy Lourdes Arrieta posted on her social networks images of the exchanges of messages between the group of legislators, which also included lawyers, magistrates and at least one priest. There, in addition to showing the internal questions and differences with the Executive, she presented the preparation of a bill and a decree to set “25 years as the maximum term of duration of a criminal process” from the commission of the alleged crime, and to establish that this limit “will reach the processes for crimes against humanity that have not received a final sentence.” Except for the trial of the military hierarchy, developed in 1985, the other trials for the crimes of the dictatorship were able to begin in 2006, after the declaration of unconstitutionality and the annulment of the normative framework that protected the repressors.
La Libertad Avanza tried to calm the internal crisis in a meeting of the bloc last week, but everything ended in the worst way, with tempers already high and shouting in Congress. Arrieta accused another deputy of violence and pointed to the president of the lower house, Martín Menem, of whom he always said he was aware of the visit to the prison. He also accused his fellow party members of promoting “an agenda that is not Milei’s” and this Monday declared that he is “afraid for his life.”
Her fellow bloc members called her a “traitor” and Menem demanded party discipline: “None of us have our own votes,” He told Radio Mitre. “We all owe this opportunity to be in a seat to President Milei, and the only thing we can do is support all the Executive’s projects.” The party is considering expelling Arrieta from its ranks, a measure that could be carried out on Tuesday.
Rejection in the Senate
In the upper house, tension arose over one of Milei’s candidates to take over as a judge of the Supreme Court of Justice. The controversial magistrate in question, Ariel Lijo, has the support of part of the judicial corporation and even of sectors of Peronism, the main opposition force to the current Government. But he is opposed by numerous civil organizations and even by allies of the ruling party, who question his technical and moral suitability, as well as point out his political handling of cases linked to corruption. The vice president also rejects him.
Senator Francisco Paoltroni, one of the “libertarian” leaders in the Senate, announced that he will do “the impossible” to prevent Lijo from reaching the highest court and defined him as “the guarantee of impunity for the last 30 years and of what will not change for the next 20,” if he is appointed. His criticisms pointed to Santiago Caputo, Milei’s advisor without a position and part of the president’s closest circle, along with his sister, Karina. He said that Caputo “is making the president lose credibility and trust.” According to Paoltroni, “the majority” of the ruling bloc does not agree with appointing Lijo.
As in the case of the House of Representatives, La Libertad Avanza is considering separating Paoltroni from its bloc of senators. The internal differences threaten to deepen the parliamentary weakness of the ruling party, which has only 38 deputies out of 257 and 7 senators out of 72. In some way, Milei pays the price of lacking an institutionalized party structure and of having formed his lists of candidates for legislators, mostly, with people outside the world of politics and public service, like himself.
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