Milei's worst week

Javier Milei wanted to start the Argentine presidency with the accelerator at maximum, but two months later he crashed against the Argentine Congress. “Criminals”, “traitors”, “extortionists” and “caste” were some of the insults that Milei hurled at the opposition deputies who on Tuesday voted against key articles of his star legislative project, a mega law to scrap the Argentine State. He indicated them with name, surname and photograph on networks. From Israel, where she was on an official trip, Milei also declared war on the provincial governors, with requests for the resignation of senior officials who reported to them, and put feminism on alert due to the parliamentary initiative to repeal legal abortion presented by one of his deputies.

It has been Milei's worst week since he took office on December 10. The harsh legislative defeat exposed Milei's inflexibility to negotiate despite leading the Government with the weakest parliamentary force since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983: La Libertad Avanza has 38 deputies out of 257 and seven senators out of 72. “Traditionally the The opposition has voted in favor of the first measures of each new president, even if they do not share them, to give them governance tools,” highlights political scientist Ana Paola Zuban. This happened with the conservative Mauricio Macri in 2015 and with the Peronist Alberto Fernández in 2019, who started their presidencies with parliamentary minorities.

“In this case, it is the same Government that blew up that possibility by refusing to negotiate more modifications after the approval of the project in general,” says Zuban. For his colleague Lara Goyburu, there was also a problem of “very great political incompetence in not bringing to the plenary session a law with points already agreed upon.”

Far from self-criticism, Milei and the Executive tried to transform the defeat into a triumph. The official message then became that the vote had managed to unmask the deputies who claimed to be in favor of the change, but in reality only wanted to maintain their privileges. Those who voted against the Government were identified as “the caste”; those who aligned themselves with La Libertad Avanza, “the people.” “We have a very solid and forceful stabilization program. We are not going to allow the excesses of politics or give and take. When they talk about consensus they are corrupt. 'Long live consensus' is 'long live corruption,' Milei warned in a radio interview on Saturday in which he accused the deputies who voted against of having 'dirty fingers.'

With the bridges broken by those who refused to sign a blank check to Milei, government officials hinted that the megalaw could be submitted to popular consultation. But this path has several obstacles: the first, that if the plebiscite is called by the president, the result is not binding. For it to be so, it needs to be convened by Congress; the second, that the minimum period between the call for a popular consultation and the voting date is two months and time, for now, is working against Milei. “Calling a plebiscite in a country where the economy is not improving is flipping a coin,” says Goyburu, “too much expectation is being placed on rapid improvement and, if it does not happen, the risk is early disillusionment.”

Fall in popularity

The president claims that he has the support of 56% of the voters who elected him in the second round. Polls, however, show declining popularity. “We have been monitoring citizen support for the president and in these almost 60 days of Government it has fallen more than ten points,” details Zuban, co-founder of the pollster Zuban Córdoba. According to the latest data they have, support varies between 40 and 45%, and they predict that it will continue to fall “because the economic measures will continue to impact people's pockets.”

Milei confirmed that he will stay the course even if it means paying a price. “We did not come to continue with the usual political game. We came to break it,” Milei said on Friday through the networks. “We don't care about operations, slander, newspaper headlines. We don't care about the pressures of those who destroyed this country. We are not playing a game. We do not mind paying the political cost of doing what needs to be done because our goal is to solve the problems of Argentines and not perpetuate ourselves in power,” he stressed.

Its radical stance means that it has more and more open fronts simultaneously. The unions staged a general strike in January and have stopped in court the labor chapters of the megadecree of necessity and urgency with which he began to govern. Social organizations call for almost daily actions to demand funds with which to keep open the free soup kitchens on which the poorest population depends to avoid going hungry. This Wednesday, the sending of a bill to repeal legal abortion awakened feminist movements, which are preparing a large mobilization for next March 8, International Women's Day.

“It is said that there is usually a honeymoon of about a hundred days with a new management. Assuming this is the case, it is closer to ending than having begun,” observes political scientist Pablo Salinas. The International Monetary Fund predicts that the Argentine economy will decline by 2.8% this year and the crisis is already visible on the street. “There is a drop in consumption, a drop in activity and there are beginning to be layoffs and capital auctions. We have to see what happens when all this affects Milei's hard core,” Salinas questions.

Of the long list of increases, the one most feared by the working class is that of public transport prices. The value of the bus ticket has quintupled in less than two months (from 52.9 pesos to 270 pesos, that is, from 0.04 euros to 0.18) in Buenos Aires and its metropolitan area, where about 10 millions of daily trips.

In more remote provinces, the withdrawal of subsidies paid by the State can raise the price of urban buses above a thousand pesos (0.8 euros), a new reason for confrontation between Milei and the governors. Milei has turned off the tap on transfers to the provinces and turns a deaf ear to complaints. “The provinces spend money on a lot of things less important than transportation. They will have to readjust their accounts and adjust,” the Executive maintains in the face of criticism.

As part of the confrontation with the governors, Milei asked the resignation of two high-ranking officials who responded to Peronist leaders: the head of the National Social Security Administration, Osvaldo Giordano, and the Secretary of Mining, Flavia Royón.

The more popular support it retains, the more difficult it will be for it to find a new path. All political solutions go through Congress and the request for resignations has given more strength to the possibility of a government alliance with the PRO of former president Mauricio Macri. This agreement would increase the government's strength in Congress and add experience to the Cabinet. “It happened spontaneously and naturally, after the election and in the events in the Chamber of Deputies. It flows towards that, plus we get along very well,” the president confirmed on Saturday. Both forces already negotiated before Milei's inauguration and the dialogue was at a standstill. After the parliamentary setback, they try again.

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