“- Javier, I have a good one and a bad one. – Tell me the good one. – Scott Bessent continues selling hundreds of millions of dollars and, at least until Sunday, we arrive. – And the bad one? – Trump spoke again, but I don’t know if he helps us or sinks us.”
That’s when Javier Milei turned on the television and saw the headlines. Donald Trump, on Air Force One, told a journalist that “Argentina is dying. They have no money, they have nothing, I like the president of Argentina, but they are fighting to survive.”
Cornered by his economic desperation, the Argentine president had no choice but to accept another humiliation, for the second consecutive week. He had just published a book of his about “The construction of the miracle“, but his friend Trump said that we are rather starving. The previous humiliation had been just a week before, in the White House, where Milei had been a decoration for a Trump press conference that almost sank him, when The North American president had said that the rescue of Argentina was conditional on the next electoral result. That day, the “markets” reacted downwards in a few minutes, understanding the message: everything is tied up with wire.
Anyway, Milei appreciates the provisional dollars these days. Without them, the exchange rate probably would have already taken down the government before October 26. But each Trumpist gesture, contradictory, reminds Milei of his character as a neighborhood phenomenonsubject to decisions that are made almost 10,000 kilometers from the Casa Rosada or the Quinta de Olivos. And they depend on many other factors: Trump, like Bessent, keeps explaining in his country why he rescues his friend Milei. The Argentine agenda snuck into the United States like never before. While Trumpism is justified by arguing the US geopolitical needs in its global competition with China, it is also true that last Saturday millions of people took to the streets in 2,600 cities in the northern country to oppose the Republican president. His main slogan was “No kings.” But among the protesters’ posters there were quite a few that made reference to their opposition to the millions of dollars in aid to Milei, while in the United States resources are being adjusted for essential needs. Not only that: Milei is the object of ridicule in many TV shows on North American screens.
A few hours before Sunday’s elections, all eyes are then on the provisional and artificial respiration nature of the electoral bailout who has Trumpist help. Everything solid vanishes into air, and from Monday another story begins, which no one knows.
If one had to stick to the gestures of recent days, one might think that From the libertarian plants they think about a relaunch of a government whose first stage failed and no longer works. As of October 26, the management of Freedom Advances It arrives with a financial front plagued with problems and an unsustainable exchange rate scheme; with the real economy sinking in sectors such as manufacturing, commerce and mass consumption; with corruption scandals that ran through the entire year, from $Libra to Disability; with a narco-scandal that took away José Luis Espert, who despite everything will appear on the ballots of the province of Buenos Aires on Sunday; and with a crushing electoral defeat on September 7 in the most populated district in the country.
Also imbued with endless internals, The government is heading not only towards inevitable economic measures that they tried to postpone until the election and that require it to accumulate dollars and pay the debt, but also towards a change of cabinet. To the departures of Patricia Bullrich, Luis Petri and Manuel Adorni who will occupy legislative positions, there is also the resignation of the now former chancellor Gerardo Werthein, the announced resignation of the Minister of Justice Mariano Cúneo Libarona and a host of unconfirmed rumors: the possible arrival of Santiago Caputo to the cabinet, more power for Federico Sturzenegger, an uncertain destiny for Guillermo Franks. And the list goes on.
None of this is confirmed, because nothing can be known before Sunday. In the calculations for what is coming will have a decisive impact if the government manages to “get away with” the election (get a third in the National Congress that allows you to sustain vetoes and eventually avoid a political trial if the crisis worsens) or if it suffers a harsher defeat that even puts scenes of loss of control of the crisis back on the agenda if it is considered that the government “is not going any further” and that it makes no sense to help “more” a government that does not have re-election in 2027. Including in this analysis, of course, the possibility that the Trumpist blackmail becomes a reality at least in part and the Bessent dollars are no longer there or are not sufficient to support the exchange rate. Contrary to what the official narrative proclaims, the “support” of the United States is not a strength, but rather an expression of repeated failures that led to the IMF’s “rescue” in April not being enough and now this unprecedented intervention by the northern power in our country had to take place. Caputo’s plans, as well as Sturzenegger’s, always led to catastrophic endings in our country.
In the field of the government program, Javier Milei continues to insist that what is coming for the second stage of his mandate will be an agenda of reforms: labor, tax, tax. A “Bases Law II”. It is the script that is written from the United States together with the IMF and the one also requested by large local businessmen. For this project, and also at the request of those who demand a new “governance” scheme given the weakness of the government, the president says he is now betting on a recomposed relationship with Mauricio Macri and a return to dialogue with governors such as those of United Provinces that, beyond the defense of their sectoral interests, share the essentials of that direction.
Of course, these combinations of political relationships and parliamentary alliances will not only be conditioned to the result on Sunday, but also to social humor and mobilization in the streets, which may also be aggravated if a new devaluation and fiscal adjustment measures add more fuel to the fire in the next period. Far from what I thought at the beginning of the year, Freedom Advances He will have to face this agenda with an enormous political and social opposition that raises serious question marks about the viability of implementing his plans. To make an analogy – always imprecise and imperfect -, Mauricio Macri failed to apply his plan of “permanent reformism” after having had a great electoral victory in October 2017. Milei’s situation today is much more fragile than the PRO leader had at that time.
However, not all of them are bad for Milei. To the support of Donald Trump and the big local businessmen, we must undoubtedly add the indispensable support that the leadership of the CGT has provided. during these two years. Without them (who even go to the May Council to negotiate the future labor reform), the program of adjustments and reforms of Freedom Advances would have fallen a long time ago. The enormous will to fight of the working people, retirees, students and women was seen again and again during this time, although its main limit was given by not having managed to overcome the bureaucracies to put in place a plan of joint struggle and with continuity until defeating the plans of power. It is the main challenge for what is to come.
That is why it is so serious to see photos like the one the candidate took from Homeland Force Juan Grabois this week, who went to the CGT to fraternize with the traitor Héctor Daer and to present his book “Argentina Humana”. He wasn’t the only one. The day before, Axel Kicillof had also held an event with the same CGT leader, for an even worse objective: to pay tribute to José Ignacio Rucci, a leading figure in the right-wing union bureaucracy of the 1970s and promoter of parastatal gangs. To make matters worse, the governor did it on the same day that marked fifteen years since the murder of Mariano Ferreyra at the hands of the union bureaucracy.
These images, which are worth a thousand words, unmask the falsehood of the speech of Homeland Force regarding “putting a stop to Milei.” If there is a sector that did not stop anything from Milei’s attacks, it was that of Héctor Daer and the CGT. These are photos that smell too much like a remake of the failed one Front of All. Even more worrying had been the act carried out by sectors of Homeland Force with Victoria Villarruel in Formosa.
In the same record, it is worth making comments regarding Peronism in the National Congress. During these two years they not only “lost” deputies who had entered their lists and went to other blocks, but they also provided essential support for the approval of different laws that were needed. Freedom Advances.
The only bloc that during this time did not vote for a single law against Milei was the Unity Left Front. That is why, given the reform program that Freedom Advances will try to get a vote in Congress, that space is the only guarantee: without pancakes, without traitors, without Kueiders who appear in the Triple Frontier with 200,000 dollars as a “prize” for having voted in favor of the great economic power.
That was one of the central messages that the left left this Wednesday in its closing of the campaign in front of the United States Embassy in the City of Buenos Aires, where it was also pointed out the only realistic program to exit the crisis and indispensable to end the surrender of the country, in contrast to a Homeland Force who, according to what they themselves confessed in media interviews, do not even have an agreement on what to do with the pressing debt problem. It is not strange: the lists of Peronism are full of former ministers and former officials of Alberto Fernández who have already failed to manage the crisis and only impoverished the country even more.
This Sunday only one battle is played. But every vote that helps give strength to the left, every vote that helps win new seats for the fight, will be a contribution in the face of what is to come, where in Congress and in the streets destiny will be played out to face the new attacks that come from those in power. Because the left, as always, will propose a program of exit from the crisis but also the broadest unity of the workers and the people for the struggle and the fight to recover the unions, the student centers and all the popular organizations as tools to fight, so indispensable for what is coming, and so on the opposite path of the bureaucrats who divide and betray.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
