Macri is fighting for his life – he will lose

Mauricio Macri, former president and once-leader of Argentina’s new right, is fighting for political survival. The prospects are not good.

Macri will go down in history as an important figure in 21st-century Argentine politics, but history books will not be written tomorrow. To begin with, he should be credited with having turned Argentina’s conservative ideals into a political party capable of winning elections. It took him 12 years from founding the Republican Proposal (PRO) party in 2003 to reaching the presidency in 2015. In between, he twice ran Buenos Aires City, the federal capital, as mayor. By all accounts, a remarkable political journey.

But now, his electorate has gone to Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party (LLA), who is bolder than Macri has ever been. Milei does well in the polls, and Macri does badly. In March 2023, less than two years ago, the ex-president weighed things up and concluded (unlike Donald Trump) that he could not make a comeback after losing his re-election bid in 2019. At that time, Milei was no more than a rising public figure hoping to run for president – very few people would have bet that he would become the dominant force he is today.

From that moment onwards, Macri has seen his electorate, his party and his leadership crumble. He is mostly to blame for it: when he decided he would not run for president again, his party remained ahead in most polls. Its top candidate was the moderate centre-right mayor of Buenos Aires City, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. But Macri thought his successor in the City was too moderate and fuelled an internal competitor, the accommodating Patricia Bullrich. It’s easy to tell how things went: she is now Milei’s security minister and one of his most staunch defenders.

The infighting weakened PRO and opened up space for Milei to grow into. When the economist made it to the second round against Peronist candidate Sergio Massa, Macri fully threw his weight behind him, doing him a huge political service, at a time when Milei was mostly on his own and even facing pressure to step down. Macri thought his backing at such a crucial moment would turn the Milei government into a cohabitation. Milei had other plans.

The President and his inner circle — sister Karina Milei and all-terrain advisor Santiago Caputo — want Macri’s followers for the upcoming midterm elections and beyond, but without the ex-president’s involvement. Meanwhile, Macri is making a desperate attempt to keep his political structure alive — and under his wing.

Argentines this year will be voting either in favour of or against the Milei administration. If they vote in favour, they will back Milei’s candidates, whoever they are. If they vote against, they will likely vote for something entirely different from Milei — the remnants of the Peronist coalition or the far left. This is one of the reasons Milei wants Congress to suspend the PASO primaries, which would encourage alliances and competition at a district level between La Libertad Avanza and PRO, prior to the showdown with the Peronists in October.

Macri, who is turning 66 next week, knows that the odds are against him. This week he cut his vacations short to gather with PRO’s leadership and agree on a stance regarding the government’s congressional agenda. Some of the people who shared the table with him are on the verge of jumping ship.

The former president’s survival instinct is making him retreat to his home territory, where he grew up politically. Buenos Aires City is run by his cousin Jorge, formerly the mayor of another district, Vicente López. Jorge is doing everything in his power to show that he can resist the Milei tsunami – he has scheduled elections in the City, which votes for 30 seats in the local Legislature, for early July. Last week, he outspokenly criticised President Milei for some anti-gay comments in the recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Jorge will be playing the bad cop, a role Mauricio Macri cannot adopt because the drain of followers to Milei would accelerate.

While the super-powerful Milei may emerge victorious as he downgrades Macri and siphons off PRO members, the tactic does not serve the broader strategy of consolidating a stable conservative political alternative in the country. For all his flaws, Macri has been a constant presence in Argentina’s political landscape for over two decades — more if you count his stint as president of Boca Juniors football club. 

Milei’s meteoric rise is as surprising as it is unstable. It would be better (for them, even for the President) if they were together.