“Never back down, never give up” was a popular film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 80s, where the martial arts hero triumphed over his opponents without giving an inch. President Javier Milei develops a similar strategy after the failure of the Omnibus Law, with the difference that in this case it is not an epic film of good guys against bad guys. and what is at stake is nothing more and nothing less the future of an Argentina in serious crisis.
The ruling party seems determined to raffle off its political capital in the first months of its mandate, without taking into account the meager resources of power that it has for when the “honeymoon” of any government newly legitimized at the polls is over, increasingly shorter, with citizens with fragile loyalties and impatient for concrete solutions to their problems.
Far from learning from the legislative defeat, Milei redoubled the bet, trusting in popular support and betting on the discredit of what he calls the caste, in which he now included the governors. In addition to the public exposure and accusation of “traitors” of those who did not endorse all of the approved text in general, there was economic retaliation, with the cutting of transportation subsidies and other policies, with the expulsion of officials who respond to the provinces. The government is convinced that it will be able to apply its economic plan even without Congress and that finally the governors, suffocated by lack of resources, will end up giving it legislative support. The move is completed with an explicit alliance with the PRO of Mauricio Macri, the only force that voted unconditionally in the Deputies.
If this is true, it is not understood why the Government spent such an amount of energy and political capital on such an uncertain move. The entire process suffered from a coherent strategy from the beginning, starting with its excessiveness. It revealed a lack of experience and a certain naivety on the part of the president and his team, a lack of focus on their priorities, coordination between their negotiators, an exacerbated personalism in decision-making and a significant lack of knowledge about how the State works and its institutional limits. and politicians that the Executive faces. All data that served the opposition to scan the internal functioning and test the weaknesses of the ruling party for future political battles.
The obvious commitment to generating a new rift between “caste or freedom” has enormous problems. The first is Milei’s reading of the 56% that supported him in the runoff. The vast majority voted for him to bring down inflation and carry out market reforms without paying attention to the details, but that support is not mechanically transferred to all of his proposals. And the voters decided at the polls to distribute power: the Executive for La Libertad Avanza, the Congress for opposition variants and the provinces for local leaders. Justice also plays, as was seen with the DNU.
The extreme polarization that serves to win elections does not necessarily help to manage. In the era of “precarious consensus,” as specialists point out, Milei should add political and institutional resources for when its initial momentum ends and the stabilization of the economy takes a while to be perceived, as expected. And in this field are its weaknesses: according to the analyst Facundo Cruz, Milei has barely 15% in Deputies (30% if he adds the PRO), 10% (16%) in the Senate, 0 governors and 6 mayors. In this framework of legislative and territorial orphanhood, pushing dialogue-oriented legislators and governors with a good image and legitimacy in their districts towards hard opposition is a bad idea. It is also important to activate the “Provinces vs. Central power” that gives them the chance to present themselves as champions of federalism.
The large reforms that Milei intends require consensus on a broad and solid coalition to sustain them. It is not by harassing opponents or squeezing governors that it will be able to build it. The dangerous “game of chicken” between powers of the State that he proposes, as political scientist Andrés Malamud rightly points out, could end up shocking democracy and Argentina, where we all travel.
2024-02-12 02:30:00