After defending the Argentine national team against France, Victoria Villarruel solidifies her agenda, much to the displeasure of Karina, the president’s sister and “boss” of the liberal government.
That was enough for the Argentine vice president Victoria Villarruel He called France “colonialists” for being offended by the anthem of the Argentine national team, so that Javier Mieli could confirm the rupture of their relationship. The couple who rule the trans-Andean country is going through the worst week seven months after his inauguration.
Although Casa Rosada tries to downplay the public inconvenience, The official map of the Argentine state published on the government website confirms something else: the vice president was wiped out from the table of power and next to Miley is his sister Karina, Secretary General of the Presidency, whom he calls “The Boss” (sic in masculine) and is the most trusted person from his time as a candidate.
The relationship between the trans-Andean president and his vice president has long had many contradictory situations, for example, in relation to the management of the Senate, where Villarruel acts as head of the chamber and can break ties in votes. He had to negotiate support in his speech with the “caste” that Miley hates so much and had to approve the “diet” by raising hands for legislators, two unpopular decisions among adjustments in the population. To make matters worse, it gave the opposition a chance to celebrate a fleeting and small victory by rejecting DNU 70/2023, which laid the foundations of the liberal government in December and is still in force (the deputies did not consider the debate).
The mistrust that exists between Karina Miley, “El Jefe” and Victoria Villarruel is evident. The autonomy that the vice president exerts is not to the liking of the secretary general of the presidency, which is why she retreats from decision-making and the spotlight. Months ago, Villarruel called the president a “poor little ham” who was trapped between him and Karina: “We are both brave.”
Efficient, Villarruel knows how to avoid tension and come out on top. Due to an alleged flu, he was not present at the May Pact, when on July 9 (Independence Day) Miley convened 18 of the 24 governors in Tucumán, but the next morning he appeared at the military parade in Buenos Aires, holding a tank, co-starring with a cheerful Javier Miley in a photo that was immortalized on the cover of The Wall Street Journal.
The Wall Street Journal
It is not the first time that a couple has had a rift in Argentina. In her first government, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2011) had a bad time with her radical vice president, Julio Cobos, whom Kirchnerism nicknamed “traitor” for rejecting the retention of the party after a “no affirmative” vote in the Senate and a long conflict with the region. When Cristina was Alberto Fernández’s vice president between 2019 and 2023, she insulted him by telling him to “use the pen” to manage social tensions, when those people had also rejected his leadership.
Football slogan against France and palace controversies
He Argentina state map Published on the website of the Presidency is an organizational chart that shows the faces and ranks of the executive branch. Today, at the same height as Miley, her sister Karina appears and below are the Chief of Staff, Guillermo Francos, and the eight ministers of the nation. At the bottom of the page it is clarified that it was updated on July 18, just one day after Vice President Victoria Villarruel’s message on the social network X, which almost caused a diplomatic conflict in France.
Argentine Government
The president of the Senate came out to defend the players of the Argentine national team after the French expressed their disapproval towards midfielder Enzo Fernández, who recorded himself on Instagram celebrating the Copa América with a fan theme considered “racist” and “xenophobic” (“They play in France, but they are all from Angola”).
The undersecretary of sports, Julio Garro, said that both captain Lionel Messi and the president of the AFA, Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, should apologize, a situation that has been questioned on social networks given the popular enthusiasm for football.
Villarruel then appealed to patriotism with harsh words, referring to France’s imperialist history: “Argentina is a sovereign and independent country. We have never had colonies or second-class citizens (…) No colonizing country will intimidate us for a court song or for telling the truth they don’t want to admit. Hypocrites, stop spreading pretentious outrage. Enzo, I will support you, Messi, thank you for everything! The Argentine people always hold their heads high! Long live Argentina!
A few hours later, Mieli expelled Garro from the cabinet for messing with Messi (“No government can tell the Argentine national team, world champion and two-time champion of the Americas, what to say, what to think or what to do”) but this was not really a gesture to Villarruel. Quite the opposite.
Without a connection to Villarruel, Miley’s sister did damage control and left her office straight for the French embassy to meet diplomat Romain Nadal, to whom she apologized for the chant, just ahead of the Argentine president’s visit for the Olympic Games and a bilateral meeting with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who has influence at the Paris Club, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Miley avoided confronting Villarruel and concealed her anger, defending her sister’s role in “freezing” the conflict.. He barely said in the streaming program “Neura” that what the vice president did was “not a happy tweet” because “you cannot generate an institutional quilombo, in diplomatic terms, for a sporting issue. But, that’s it, Kari has already fixed it.” Meanwhile, the official spokesman Manuel Adorni disavowed the vice president and assured that his words against France “are not the position of the government.”
In the village of Villarruel, the events point to a reinforcement of his own agenda. As well as the anti-France tweet, the image still posted by him communicates perfectly: Villarruel chose to show himself with a poncho and the Virgin Mary in the festivals of inland towns, while Miley made 12 trips outside the country in seven months of management.
“I always wanted to defend the Argentine national team and Argentina, so all the other interpretations, the truth is that I ignore them and I am not offended. I think the most important thing is to support each Argentine and the team gives us so much joy that I think we all agree to thank them, support them and always be with them,” Villarruel said in Catamarca, downplaying the importance of the libertarian interior.
Then, on Wednesday, Argentina’s number two went alone to the Palermo rural exhibition. On his arrival, he limited himself to telling the press that his relationship with Miley is “definitely good” and expanded on the issues of interest to him on his agenda: management from Congress to improve biotechnology production. “I don’t want to lose the relevance of what I came here to do, which is to support the field. This will be the second time I talk about that issue. Today the field is the only important thing,” he declared.
According to Clarín, Miley’s sister maintains an “oily relationship” with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, with whom she is moving to strengthen the liberal party La Libertad Avanza in every corner of the country in partnership with Eduardo “Lule” Menem, cousin of former president Carlos Menem. It is this armed group that could fuel the confrontation between Karina and Villarruel since it is “The Boss” who appoints his people and adjudicates other militants working on the presidential campaign.
This week, pro-government senator Fernando Poltroni, one of the seven from La Libertad Avanza in the upper house, came out in defense of the vice president. It was also speculated that he would not vote on the document for Ariel Lijo, the controversial judge promoted by Javier Miley, to become a member of the Supreme Court.
It remains to be seen if the Senate will review the 100,000 million pesos (about 70 million dollars) that the president allocated to revive the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) under the wing of adviser Santiago Caputo, another of its pillars. Along with Karina. At the beginning of his administration, Villarruel was enthusiastic about taking charge of the defense and security sectors. He was refused permission to negotiate the entry of Patricia Bullrich and Luis Petri, candidates of the Together for Change, who came in third in the October general elections. Will you intervene now?