Internal need and external demand: Javier Milei expands into the political arena and paints a new map

This Sunday, Javier Milei will once again set the agendaas he has been doing with skill since taking office in December. The presentation of the bill Budget 2025about which the Government maintains secrecy and which, as anticipated, Scope will focus on zero deficit, it will be a postcard of the political map, which continues to be reconfigured after the tectonic movements generated after last year’s elections.

While the President is trying to get out of the economic labyrinth of still high inflation despite the excessive adjustment that led to a drop in activity to pandemic levels, on the political level he is focusing his attention on parliament. He knows: the games are now played almost exclusively in the Congresswhich this week gave him victories and defeats in equal doses.

The novelty, perhaps, was that just as it was recently mentioned in these columns that Milei went down into the mud of Freedom Moves Forward (LLA) In order to put things in order internally, the President has recently expanded into another arena, from which he has remained relatively on the sidelines until now: pure and hard negotiation with potential allies, a plan of seduction to obtain the necessary adhesions, with tools of politics that he said he abhors. The trunk in the basement of the caste, at the service of his objectives: favors, positions, promises. Last week He was unable to disseminate the positive data of a drop in the CPI in August, but instead managed to split the UCR bloc in the House of Representatives.Once again, the politician beats the economist, despite his existential desires.

On the one hand, Milei’s meetings at Casa Rosada with deputies and senators are a sign of the leadership crisis that LLA is going through. Below Milei, the plain. Until very recently, these matters were left in the hands of other interlocutors. Guillermo Francos He was forced to leave after the gastrointestinal condition that left him hospitalized last Sunday. While convalescing, he received questions from governors in the election of the Federal Investment Council (CFI) And little by little, this virtue of carrying out the role of “good cop”, praised until now, began to be corroded by that of “bad cop”, which exercises Patricia Bullrichwith a greater role in the Cabinet in this final sprint.

Tensions also appear with Santiago CaputoMilei’s star advisor. In the second circle of LLA not everyone validates him as a political executor or as a liaison with the President. “If Santiago calls me with an order, I turn around and pick up the phone: ‘Javier, is this so?’ I ask him.”expressed to Scope a leader of the first libertarian hour. Yes, he recognizes it, of course, in his original focus. “In strategic communication he is number one,” added this libertarian, who also said that the internal LLA in Congress, far from calming down, entered into a dirty war phase, with attacks carried out using material from the private lives of some and others.

It also happens, especially when on other occasions the negotiators made a proposal in private and hours later they retracted it in public, the Friendly opponents only trust Milei’s word. Thus, between internal needs and external demands, the President opens up the range of functions and adds to macroeconomic monitoring and vanities abroad the chapter of the rosca. And things did not go badly for him.

A hand painted map

The central victory of the Government was to have sustained the Unpopular Veto to the pension reform with easeThe zigzagging radicals were joined by the deputies who respond to the Governors of Misiones, Río Negro and Saltawho abstained. The main defeat was the approval in the Senate of the educational financing lawwhich will lead Milei to trigger the Unpopular Veto II, with perhaps unpredictable consequences. It is worth remembering that after the massive university march in April, the President downgraded two gears instead of upgrading one, perhaps the only time he had such behavior in the abundant stock of daily confrontations he has accumulated since he took office.

The repeal of the DNU that granted funds reserved for SIDE It is a party favor and archive material for history, as it is an unprecedented event since the reform of the Constitution in 1994. The approval of the Single Paper Ballot was a demand not only of LLA, but of other spaces, and strictly speaking it cuts with electoral expenses and political clientelism, a campaign promise that will be fulfilled. Nor the nonsense: The system favors new forces such as the libertariansalready the familiar faces (even celebrities) competing against unknowns on the same ballot.

In any case, Milei has once again upset the political map. She has left the UCR wounded, which is considering what to do with the deputies who refused to raise their hand with the rest of the bloc for a project drafted by the radicals themselves. The identity crisis is deepening, and There are already white berets testing candidates for LLA in 2025because if there is one thing that libertarians do not have, it is leaders in all territories.

Peronism, meanwhile, remains at the same crossroads, since despite being the majority in both chambers, the votes are won by the federalists and the radicals who accompany them. But even so, it has a strength: it remains with few leaks and It was clearly defined as the opposition partyThe need to generate consensus had a good sign last week, when the governors managed to re-establish the broader league, from pre-Milei times, to maintain control of the CFI – a key body for the provinces – and block the attempts of the JxC leaders to impose their new muscle.

Cristina Kirchner reappeared to polarize with Milei, but also to mark the field inward, especially when Ricardo Quintela, Governor of La Riojaseemed to be advancing without obstacles until now to the presidency of the party. Will Kirchnerism put up a challenger in the national PJ elections in November? It is one of the unknowns. The paradox in Cristina’s case is that she herself offers the card of renewal, of “the new songs” that Axel Kicillof wanted to write. The lack of clear leadership also affects Peronism.

Thus, when Milei arrives at Congress tonight, she will find the map that she seemed to draw with patience: without Peronism in the chamber, without the unruly radicals, with the tacit presence of legislators who answer to governors (who may not be visible but will appear when they are needed) and with the appearance in the photo of her own and the natural allies of the PRO. They seem few, although they demonstrated that they can broaden their backs to maintain parity in parliament.