Tomorrow is Palm Sunday for the Christian calendar and the 48th anniversary of the 1976 military coup for the nation as a whole, while last Tuesday marked the classic first 100 days of the Javier Milei Presidency. If Milei swept the run-off in the same month as the arrival of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour here last November, the first standard milestone for passing judgement on Milei’s eras (errors?) tour has now come but let us begin with tomorrow’s anniversary.
By falling inside the weekend, this anniversary removes at least one point of friction from a conflictive presidency since otherwise Milei would face a tricky choice between upholding an anniversary enshrined by Kirchnerism (although instituted as a public holiday by the Eduardo Duhalde caretaker administration in 2002, contrary to common knowledge) or challenging almost the only democratic consensus over the past four decades. The Milei administration contains a strong denialist streak subscribing to the “two demons” theory in the best of cases and linking human rights to guerrilla victims when not rubbishing them altogether. It is yet another contradictory quirk of Milei’s logic that he repeatedly calls the state “a criminal organisation” (which does not prevent him from deploying it against the criminal organisations of Rosario) without apparently considering it capable of state terrorism.
Human rights are among various important absentees from the “Pact of May” proposed by Milei (health and education would be others) – the self-styled libertarian would seem to profess an almost Marxist economic determinism in seeing money as the only vector of public life with this week’s controversial Supreme Court nominations a further indication of his indifference to institutional and ethical foundations. Yet no need to tamper with the “Pact of May” by broadening its agenda beyond its excessively economic 10 points – the CELS human rights organisation has instead proposed a “Pact of March” to fill in some of the gaps in advance by ensuring a democratic consensus, also warning of an attempt to use Rosario crime to militarise security against the wishes of society or even the Armed Forces themselves.
This pact should not be a “take it or leave it” proposition any more than the one Milei proposes to present to provincial governors on the national day of May 25. Human rights must be universal, to be respected under progressive and conservative governments alike, and thus cannot be limited to their Kirchnerite vision. Perhaps the common ground for this pact should be the exclusion of denialism of any kind – whether of state terrorism under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship or of guerrilla violence assailing democratic governments even ahead of that junta without falling into any “two demons” theories: state terrorism is on altogether another scale of destruction and aberration.
Turning to the 100 days, this Napoleonic yardstick has been used traditionally by political analysts to measure new governments against their campaign promises after a few months of reality in office but Milei seems to evade such analysis as he eludes many conventional criteria. The concept of 100 days dates from over two centuries ago when news could take that long to travel intercontinentally whereas Milei functions in the liquid and instant universe of social networks. By announcing in advance blood, sweat and tears as the immediate result of his uncompromising austerity (which nevertheless makes concessions, especially when updating public service pricing threatens to take inflation off its downward path), Milei transmits an image of “what you see is what you get,” which is partially although not completely true.
Within those limits a balance of these first 100 days may be drawn which is likely to be completely different 100 days later. The achievements include a drastic conversion of fiscal deficit into surplus (but at the unsustainable price of evaporating pensions, suspending public works and recession in general) and stabilising the currency (although making dollar inflation almost as sharp as peso inflation with this city abruptly among the most expensive in the world) while maintaining Milei’s November run-off percentage almost intact. Negatives include a pulverised purchasing power with both halves of the previous stagflation aggravated into recession and double-digit inflation percentages, a compulsion for unnecessary conflict complicating relations with Congress and provincial governors while jeopardising the advance of reform, a disorganised administration, insensitivity to the poor and a primitive foreign policy which apparently thinks that there are only two countries in the world (the United States and Israel), not almost 200. And that is without even mentioning his administration’s all-too ideological frame on human rights, a problem Argentina is not new to.
With all these uncertainties for the future, let us not forget the tragic certainties of Memory Day tomorrow.
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