Javier Milei: this is how six months of governing Argentina has gone with economic achievements, social challenges and great political entanglements

To the rhythm of the hard rock songs of the group La Renga, The president shook his hair and opened his arms while more than 6,000 libertarians applauded wildly, before sitting down to listen to him for more than an hour speak against “the caste” – the political class, the bureaucracy and the union leadership – and against “that damned State, source of all problems.”

For that day, the President still hoped to mark May 25, a national holiday, with a political triumph: to carry out his controversial Base Lawan ambitious legislation that seeks to deregulate the economy, reduce the size and social expenses of the State, privatize entities, lower some taxes and eliminate others, and grant broad powers to the Argentine president to manage an ultraliberal turn in one of the most nationalized and third world interventionists.

But, Milei did not manage to have the law ready by the 25th. Although the Lower House had already given its approval to the project, with important modifications, it was difficult for it to advance in the Senate, which forced Milei to introduce, this weekend , changes in his cabinet and in his team of collaborators in the Pink Housewith a view to ensuring a successful negotiation since his party, La Libertad Avanza, lacks majorities in Congress.

Until now, and regardless of the wear and tear from the fights, the setbacks and the corrections he has had to make, Six months into governing Argentina, Javier Milei retains a reasonable margin of popular support.
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According to a recent Opinion Lab survey, 49 percent of those surveyed have a positive image of him, versus 45 percent who have a negative one, figures that divide the public, but are much better than those of his opponents such as former president Cristina Kirchner who, in the same survey, barely has a 36 percent positive image, against 61 percent a negative one.

The president obtains better results in other polls: 53 percent in Opina Argentina and 58.7 percent in Giacobbe Consultores.

However, Milei is below the levels reached by his predecessors after the first months of his mandate: according to the Government Confidence Index, a monthly survey by the Torcuato di Tella University, he reaches a score of 2.51 out of 5, therefore below Mauricio Macri and Alejandro Fernández, who surpassed the grade of 3 at this point in their mandates.

At more than 70 years old, Norma Carmagnola, a retiree who overcame the cold winds of the Buenos Aires autumn to attend the event at Luna Park in support of the president, told journalist Fabien Palem of the French newspaper The Figaro, his confidence: “I hope he is successful both economically and in his fight against corruption,” he said. The situation is difficult, but we have to endure, at least until the end of the year.”

Carmagnola has felt firsthand the impact of economic adjustment, which affects numerous social programs supported with the checkbook of the Argentine State, during decades of Peronist populism. But his situation, like that of millions of Argentines impoverished by the collapse of the economy, was already bad enough before Milei’s rise.

46 percent of the population lived in poverty in the middle of last year, a figure not seen since the 2001 crisis that led to the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa.

Some indicators invite moderate optimism. Inflation, which broke a record in December at the end of Fernández’s term, when it reached 25.5 percent monthly, has been falling since Milei’s arrival: 20.6 percent in January, 13.2 percent in February, 11 percent in March and 8.8 percent in April.

All of this thanks to the harsh adjustment in government spending, which allowed Milei’s economic team, headed by its minister of the sector, Luis Caputo, to show a fiscal surplus equivalent to 0.2 percent of GDP in April. For the first time in years, perhaps decades, the Government is spending less than it collects.

Added to that is that, a couple of weeks ago, The Argentine government received an unexpected boost from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Julie Kozack, spokesperson for the IMF, revealed during a press conference that the entity expects that “the economy (of Argentina) will begin to grow in the second half of the year,” a first positive turn after the Fund had said that the Gaucho GDP would fall 2.8 percent this year.

“The road ahead continues to be difficult,” he added, referring to fiscal and monetary matters. Maintaining and building on these early advances will mean that policies will have to evolve in several dimensions.”

Kozack mentioned the need to free the exchange market, once the economy has gained stability and the peso can compete adequately with the dollar.

Furthermore, on the fiscal front, the IMF proposes as necessary “the efficiency and progressivity of the tax system” while asking that social assistance programming “be sufficient and well targeted to protect the most vulnerable.”

The Fund announced the disbursement of 800 million dollars, within a debt rescheduling plan agreed with the previous government. Maintaining this reprogramming now seems less complicated, since the IMF considers, according to its spokesperson, that “the decisive implementation by the authorities of their stabilization plan is producing better results than expected.”

Milei’s great challenge in this field is that such an ambitious dismantling of social plans, many of which had become channels of corruption and enrichment of a few since a good part of the resources were left by the wayside, that does not lead to misery to more Argentines than those Already today they appear incapable of satisfying their basic needsespecially in terms of food.

And in that, the IMF wanted to launch a warning and told Milei that it must make an effort to prevent the weight of the adjustment from “falling disproportionately on working families,” as expressed by spokesperson Kozack.

It is no longer just about preventing the
Argentine unions, as powerful as they are questioned in terms of corruption, from paralyzing the country with a succession of strikes against the economic policy of the libertarian leader, but also about doing everything possible to not hit the popular classes any further. who have been suffering the worst of each crisis for years.

In order to continue advancing with its agenda in Congress and achieve, among others, the approval of the Bases LawMilei has had to make an act of contrition and recognize that part of his team was not doing the job well with parliament.

Hence, this weekend he beheaded his chief of staff, Nicolás Posse, and replaced him with the until now Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos.

Posse had unsuccessfully led an ineffective team at the Casa Rosada, which also included Milei’s mysterious sister, Karina. Apart from being general secretary of the Presidency and fulfilling the functions of first lady, those who know her close relationship with the president assure that she is in charge of such esoteric matters as the communication that Milei claims to maintain with her dead dog, and the reading of the tarot, As reported this Monday in a chronicle for the newspaper ABC of Madrid, its correspondent in Buenos Aires, the experienced Brazilian journalist living in Argentina, Sylvia Colombo.

Francos, the new chief of staff, has the responsibility of successfully completing the approval of the Base Law, first in the plenary session of the Senate, and then, upon his return to the Lower House. that has already voted on a first version and must now give its blessing to the changes introduced by the Senate.

As the analyst Sergio Berenzstein recently pointed out, in a column in the newspaper The nationneither the president, nor the vice president of Argentina, Victoria Villarruel, nor the general secretary of the Presidency, Karina Milei, nor the chief of staff Posse, “had relevant management experience in the public sector.”

An example of inexperience is the scandal that broke out this weekend, when a judge discovered that tons of food intended to help the poorest families were about to expire in a warehouse of the Human Capital Secretariat. Former President Kirchner took the opportunity to target the Government “for putting someone with no experience” in charge of the food program.

After Posse’s sacrifice, that void has been filled by Francos, who has been a deputy, president of the Bank of the Province of Buenos Aires, representative of the country in the IDB and, in recent months, Minister of the Interior. Francos saved the Bases Law from collapse in the senatorial commission and must now complete the task so that, with that powerful legal instrument, Milei can move forward with his agenda.

This Tuesday, another appointment of an experienced man, Federico Sturzenegger, in an as yet undefined cabinet portfolio was expected. Former president of the Central Bank of the Republic -the issuer-, he is a renowned economist with excellent relations with the political world.

If you like, Francos and Sturzenegger are two men from “the caste” that Milei has fought so much in his speeches, but that now, in an exercise of political realism, the president needs so that his ambitious libertarian revolution does not remain stranded at the beginning. of the road.