Javier Milei: a successful prophet, a king in trouble

Javier Milei travels the world embodying, to put it in biblical terms, the prophet of an anarcho-libertarian doctrine that, in each country, is seen as the echo of a local version. There in Buenos Aires, thousands of kilometers away, his Government is shaken by an organizational crisis. Problems of the difficult office of the ruler. Or the king, to continue with the Bible. That contrast does not seem to affect him before the public. His figure continues to have a widespread consensus, which appears immutable.

During the last week Milei was outside Argentina. She visited California to interview the big stars of Silicon Valley. When she boarded the plane, she could still hear the roar of a crack in her computer. She got rid of Nicolás Posse, the chief of staff who had accompanied him throughout the race to the Presidency. An engineer with a career as a bureaucrat in private corporations, Posse worked in the same office as Milei for more than a decade, when both worked at an airport company. The departure was painful. Eternal days in which the Presidency itself leaked to the media that Posse was no longer in the Government. Without anyone accepting his resignation. He ended up requesting it from Karina, Milei’s sister, who is the last word in the daily vicissitudes of the administration.

The obsessive and stealthy Posse had accumulated an infinite number of functions. The heads of the Armed Forces and the Security Forces owed his appointment to him. Public companies, which Milei wants to privatize, were also in charge. She also reserved relations with the United States. And the control of the Federal Intelligence Agency, which manages espionage.

To replace Posse, Milei chose Guillermo Francos, who until now had occupied the Ministry of the Interior. The Government of La Libertad Avanza is founded, like fascism in Italy or Podemos in Spain, on a militant discourse against “the caste.” That is, against all elites, and especially against the political elite. Francos is, however, the most complete example of a traditional party leader: dialogueist, negotiator, argumentative. He has cultivated endless relationships, for decades, with all those Milei despises.

Until now, Francos’ mission was to get Congress to approve a very long list of reforms encrypted in a single law. With an ability close to magic, he is about to achieve it. The ruling party is in an absolute minority in both chambers.

The reasons for Posse’s departure are unclear. The President has told very close collaborators that “I asked him for several things that he did not comply with.” Nobody knows what they are. But we do know what the most relevant consequence of the replacement was. Milei also fired Silvestre Sívori, the head of the Intelligence services.

Now that area, crucial for a leader like Milei, who has a conspiratorial vision of public life, that is, for someone who suspects that the processes have hidden motivations, was left in charge of the President. He delegated the appointment of the head of the spies to the person he trusts most, after his sister: Santiago Caputo, his image strategist. Caputo, at the same time, selected someone with no background for the position, mechanical technician Sergio Neiffert, who was a close friend of his father, now deceased.

The displaced Sívori told his relatives that, in reality, he was fired for resisting spying on opposition leaders and critical journalists. Those who fired him let it be known that they did it because Sívori spied, but on their own. Among others, to Caputo. Milei enters “la casta” through the front door, that of the lack of control of espionage: a problem that has plagued all Argentine governments for more than twenty years.

Milei flew to California leaving this internal entanglement behind. She returned early Sunday morning from El Salvador, where she made a stopover to attend Nayib Bukele’s resumption of command. She found her government shaken by another crisis. The leader of one of the movements through which the State has been processing social aid for three decades, Juan Grabois, a Kircherist militant, denounced that the Ministry of Human Capital was withholding food intended for the poor. A court case was opened and left in the hands of Judge Sebastián Casanello. The same magistrate who investigates whether public funds were misappropriated in the intermediation that social organizations have exercised between the State and the most vulnerable.

The minister targeted by the judge, Sandra Pettovello, like other Cabinet officials, argued that the complaint came from people affected by their fight against corruption. But the scandal did not stop. In the midst of the storm, Pettovello fired his Secretary of Social Action, Pablo De la Torre, accusing him of diverting funds to private organizations that later returned them to distribute among friends.

The two turbulences are intertwined. Pettovello always suspected that Posse and Sívori were spying on her. It is likely that Sívori’s head has rolled, driven by that version. At the same time, Secretary De la Torre believes that he was falsely accused, in an armed complaint by spies surrounding the minister. Milei’s management joins a tradition that is beginning to be quite long: that of governments shaken by wars between self-governing bands of spies. It would be appropriate to remember John Le Carré: “The quality of a democracy is measured by the control it exercises over the Intelligence organizations.”

Political incompetence

These speculations encourage coffee conversations and conceal the most relevant information: Milei’s management is undermined by very alarming levels of incompetence, which do not match the attractiveness that the President has in local and international public opinion. While Milei was preaching in California, the Chief of Staff, the head of espionage and the person responsible for the largest budget in the State, which is the one allocated to assisting those in need, fell into his house.

It is difficult to gauge the political cost of these inconveniences. Because Milei’s management is on the ropes, but her image is still highly valued. There is no need to imagine an exceptional phenomenon. Mauricio Macri, for the same stage of his mandate, had a positive image 20 points higher than Milei’s 53%. But, it is true, the economic situation with Macri was not as difficult as the one that Milei has to manage.

Why does the Argentine president keep his popularity intact in the midst of an economy that is collapsing, raising fears about the unemployment rate? The most insightful sociologists answer with an unexpected explanation: “Because people believe that he is keeping his word. He promised a wild fit, and he is delivering.” Beneath this accompaniment lies another motive: a visceral repudiation of politics and those who represent it.

This second factor fuels another oddity. The clumsiness of Milei and her team, which is striking, can for a time be seen as a merit. Expertise, familiarity with the rituals of the State, the flexibility to manage a crisis without it overflowing, are no longer virtues. They are looked at as vices. The rejection of professionals in power leads to such a point of astray, which in most cases is very justified.

This sensitivity, which falls short of being a doctrine, fuels many populist leaders of this era. And, in the case of Milei, it is the reason for attraction with the Silicon Valley business community. San Altman (Open AI), Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta Platforms), the owners and managers of digital empires with whom the libertarian prophet interviewed, also dream of a world without a State, in which globalization can unfold without any institutional limitations.

In a few days Milei will continue his grand tour. In the middle of the month he will arrive in Italy, invited by Giorgia Meloni to attend the G7 summit. He will then visit Emmanuel Macron in Paris and participate in a Freedom Summit with Volodimir Zelensky in Switzerland. He will extend his stay in the Old World by passing through Spain to receive an award from the Juan de Mariana Foundation.

For some officials, these excursions are an escape from the claustrophobia that the daily and often tedious decisions of the government unleash in Milei. But he justifies himself in another way: “I am one of the two top world leaders and the most important defender of freedom on a planetary scale.” He sees himself obeying a mission. Even as his administration navigates the storm of a painful economic situation and a team that makes extraordinary displays of clumsiness. They are the terms of a rare asymmetry: a successful prophet and a struggling king.

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