Argentina's President Javier Milei: Authoritarian Drift and Far-Right Policies

2023-12-31 04:40:00

Javier Milei walked down the steps of Congress to give his inauguration speech as president of Argentina less than a month ago. He spoke facing the supporters who were waiting for him under the scorching sun and with his back to Parliament. It was a gesture, and then came the measures. In the first 20 days of Government, the far-right imposed a decree that changes or deletes more than 300 laws without debate, implemented a protocol of action against protests and sent a bill to Congress to expand the powers of the Executive. This authoritarian drift and the radical nature of the measures are beginning to take their toll on the president: the social climate is effervescent – the unions announced a strike for the end of January – and Milei’s negative image has risen five points to 55% since he arrived at the Casa Rosada, according to a consultant.

Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, does not have majorities in Congress – it has only 38 of 257 deputies and seven of 72 senators – and lacks its own governors with the ability to influence Parliament. He retains, however, the broad support that the polls gave him. Milei obtained 30% of the votes in the first electoral round and managed to add 56% in the second against the Peronist Sergio Massa. These days, the far-right is living the idyll that follows the electoral victory. His now ally, former conservative president Mauricio Macri, recommended, from his own experience, to move forward “with shock and without gradualism.”

To the megadecree with more than 300 reforms to begin dismantling the State, to the bill with more than 600 articles that give a radical turn to the Argentine political, economic and social system and to the protocol to prohibit street closures, Milei added a decalogue of economic measures that apply a strong adjustment, the dismissal by decree of more than 5,000 state employees hired in the last year and the suspension of the payment of a similar number of social aid due to “incompatibilities”, as reported by the Government this Friday. Every day, the Milei Government overwhelms with new announcements. On the last working day of this year, presidential advisor Federico Sturzenegger, author of the first package sent to Congress, announced that they will announce another initiative that contemplates the elimination of 160 regulations. Milei puts it in these terms: “Argentina requires an urgent change of course to avoid disaster.”

“Milei is trying to dismantle the country that has been put together since 1916, since the secret and mandatory male vote was applied. At the beginning of the 21st century in Argentina there was also a regime change that oriented the State and society towards the center-left. The one that is being produced now is very strong and very fast,” says Sergio Morresi, doctor in Political Science and co-author of the book. It is between us. Where does the extreme right that we did not see coming come from and how far can it go?. To achieve this, says the political scientist, the president relies on a “contempt for institutions” that in Argentina “has been developing for a long time.” “Argentina continues to be a place where democracy is valued. But what does Milei understand by democracy? Do what people want as he interprets; That is, to do what his voters, not the group, enable him to do,” explains Morresi.

Protest by social organizations and unions against the Government of Javier Milei, in Buenos Aires. Amanda Cotrim

Asked during the campaign if he believes in the democratic system, Milei did not answer the journalist’s question, which asked for a clear definition. “I believe that democracy has many errors,” the then candidate simply said. Some have resorted to adjectives such as “Napoleonic” – as pointed out by a center-right politician, Rodrigo De Loredo – or “messianic” – as the former left-wing Uruguayan president José Mujica pointed out – to describe the president in accordance with the first acts of the Government. of the. Also “revolutionary”, as the historian and analyst Carlos Pagni, columnist for EL PAÍS, wrote in the newspaper La Nación: “Revolutions negotiate little, they are not deliberative. It is an idea of how society should be drawn that is transferred to reality as if it were a blank piece of paper.”

The institutional weakness of the Milei Government to carry out the “reconstruction” of a country in crisis is compensated by the support it receives from at least two actors, Morresi believes. “Milei has just won clearly and has some social support. Furthermore, in these few weeks it obtained the strong and determined support of the most important business groups in the country,” shows the analyst. The political scientist adds that the far-right also has the support of Together for Change, the center-right coalition he faced in the elections, and part of Peronism, which will be the key to ensuring that the megadecree and the omnibus law are not rejected. by Congress.

The legislative chambers are one of the obstacles that the far-right measures will have to overcome – another is Justice and the third is social mobilization. Milei has maintained his challenge to the Legislative Branch since he walked down the steps of Congress on December 10 and turned his back on them. “Explain to me why Congress is against something that is good for people. Because people understood well, huh? “She blurted out in a television interview. If Congress does not approve her measures, she suggested that night, she will call a popular consultation – which will have to be non-binding. Later, he accused “some” legislators of being corrupt: “Those who like discussion so much are because they are looking for bribes.” [sobornos]”.

“This way of governing that he is proposing has to do with his way of understanding power and reading the keys to the position he is in,” believes political scientist Yanina Welp. The academic, a specialist in the study of democracy, disagrees with those who defend that Milei governs unilaterally because the lack of majorities in Congress leaves her no other option: “In democracy there are always alternatives,” she points out. Expanding the Government coalition or negotiating each law separately, for example, are some of the options proposed on social network It is a “risky alternative” that can “delegitimize a necessary public policy agenda.” Furthermore, others warn, the polarization caused by such radical measures can further hurt the fragmented Argentine society.

The more than 300 reforms imposed in the megadecree came into force this Friday and still have to be approved by Parliament. The 664 articles of the omnibus law will begin to be discussed by Congress in extraordinary sessions. For Welp, two scenarios open up. “If the law passes, we would be facing a situation very similar to that of Fujimori’s Peru,” explains the political scientist. For different analysts, Milei is trying to raise a conflict of legitimacy with Parliament, as the former Peruvian president did in the early 1990s. Alberto Fuijimori came to the Presidency with enormous popular support and took advantage of it to attack Congress, where he did not have a majority. The Peruvian deputies, scared and delegitimized, gave him special powers. The Shining Path’s heavy hand against terrorism made Fujimori even more popular and after months of attacking Congress, he closed it in 1992 with a self-coup.

Social and political organizations in a demonstration in Buenos Aires this December 20.Tiago Ramírez Baquero

“I have doubts that it will happen. If it does not happen, the uncertainty is greater,” warns Welp. “In the second scenario we would be faced with a situation where Milei would be forced to back down and govern in a different way,” explains Welp, who warns that “a majority views the content and procedure of the reforms with bad eyes.” In recent days, the courts have received proposals of unconstitutionality against the megadecree that constitutional lawyers see as justified and hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to reject the unilateral way in which the measures are being proposed, in addition to rejecting the content of these, which enable the privatization of public companies, open the door to operations in dollars, punish protests and kick off to make the labor market and the health system more flexible, among a hundred other measures.

A study by the consulting firm Zuban Córdoba y Asociados published this Friday indicates that since Milei assumed the Presidency, his negative image has worsened by five points and has gone from 50% to 55%. The analysis shows that for more than half of the population surveyed, the country has taken the “wrong” direction since the president took office. “Both the deregulatory DNU and the omnibus law presented in Congress garner significant levels of rejection. It even seems to begin to form a majority willing to vote against all measures in a potential plebiscite,” the study points out. 56% of those consulted assure that the megadecree “is unconstitutional” and more than half affirm that they “strongly disagree” with the sending of the bill to Congress.

The positive image, according to this study, is still at 44%. Carla Yumatle, political philosopher and professor at the Torcuato Di Tella University, explains that the social support that Milei still has allows her to “understand the social mood” of “disaffection, anger, frustration” on the part of citizens. “He has that support having promised pain and sacrifice. Citizens see the status quo as more costly than all the suffering that Milei is asking of them,” explains Yumatle. “The idea that the State hinders and does not guarantee freedom, but rather takes it away, is an unprecedented fact in Argentine political culture,” adds the theorist.

“Milei has positioned herself against the status quo. He sees the existing order as a trap and does not believe that it is possible to get out of that trap with the mechanisms proposed by that same social order. How does he go about producing decisive social change? I think it’s creating a certain anarchy, so that no one really knows where they stand. It is a way of implementing a refoundation, a tabula rasa,” says Yumatle. The philosopher warns, however, that “refounding is not the same as governing”: “What is effective at the beginning is not necessarily effective in keeping you going later and the fact that it starts like this does not necessarily mean that it will continue.” So”. For the analyst, what remains to be seen is if Milei is going to recognize that difference: “If he is going to see it or if Congress and the citizens are going to force him to recognize it.”

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