Over 500 years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli warned that “there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than the creation of a new system. The initiator will make enemies of all who prospered under the old regime, and receive only lukewarm support from those who would prosper under the new.”
As the great Florentine would have predicted had he still been with us, President Javier Milei, who wants to reshape Argentina from the ground up, is already being besieged by furious Kirchnerites, trade union bosses and “social movement” activists who know he is determined to deprive them of the sources of income they have grown accustomed to making good use of, while many who think that most such populists are greedy parasites seem decidedly reluctant to do anything that might annoy them.
In the last few days, dozens of Radicals, PRO “moderates” and “republican” Peronists linked to what remains of the Juntos por el Cambio coalition have been telling us that – while they are in favour of most of the measures Milei is seeking to apply – they are dead against presidential decrees because in their view they are undemocratic and unconstitutional. This strikes many as being a bit strange. All recent presidents have issued dozens of decrees, some of which were every bit as far-reaching as the ones devised by Milei and his most influential aide, Federico Sturzenegger, and put into the large packet of measures lawmakers who much rather go on holiday have been asked to peruse.
Few objected on principle to the decrees “of necessity and urgency” signed by Raúl Alfonsín (10), Carlos Menem (195), Fernando de la Rúa (59), Eduardo Duhalde (154), Néstor Kirchner (236), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (78); Mauricio Macri (71) or Alberto Fernández (177); hereabouts, bypassing parliament in this way is routine, though now and then the courts may step in and oblige the government to come up with something slightly different.
Milei is in a hurry. Like other presidents before him, he is well aware that he would be well-advised to make good use of the predictably brief “honeymoon” period he has been granted to ram through painful measures and hope that, by the time elections are once again looming up over the horizon, they have begun to produce tangible benefits that will convince folk he is doing a good job. As Machiavelli pointed out, “a wise man does quickly what the fool does finally.”
You do not need to be a financial wizard to know that unless whoever is in power acts quickly, what is left of the national economy would in all likelihood be devastated by a hyperinflationary tornado which would reduce to beggary millions of still reasonably well-off families and hit very hard the fifty percent or so of the population which has already fallen below the poverty line. Flat-broke and boycotted by the international financial community, Argentina is facing a dire emergency, but parliamentarians are accustomed to working at such a leisurely pace that all hell would be certain to break out long before they managed to get down to discussing the pros and cons of what the government proposes.
Of course, new presidents are not the only people who try to take full advantage of the time that is available to them before the next election season gets underway. Other politicians are equally inclined to assume that what they do or say during a rest period will have been forgotten by voters before polling day arrives. When on the campaign trail, their every word and gesture will be taken into account by both their friends and their foes, but for now at any rate, that is something they assume they do not have to worry about.
Milei made his name by railing against the political “caste,” treating all its members – including some, among them Patricia Bullrich, who would eventually become close allies – as bone-idle layabouts or outright crooks open to bribery. For Milei, this tactic worked wonderfully well because large numbers of people agreed that the country’s politicians were a sorry lot who deserved to be sent packing, but now that he is in the Pink House he needs their cooperation. Not surprisingly, many who, broadly speaking, share his views are reluctant to give him a helping hand. For them, payback time has come and they are determined to make the most of it.
None of this would matter overmuch were it not for the fact that the socio-economic crisis that has the country in its grip is not merely something Milei invented while on the way to the top. It is all too real. Unless the political leadership gets to grips with it very soon, Argentina could share the fate of Venezuela, another “rich” country that was ruined by the short-sighted stupidity of the former democratic establishment and the sheer malignity of the individuals who profited from its many failings. If Milei gets toppled by the kind of individuals who lost no time in taking to the streets to demand his downfall, Argentina would not say goodbye to austerity, as they insinuate, but would suffer a far more brutal squeeze than the one that has just started without there being any reason to hope that it could serve a useful purpose by removing the barriers to sustainable growth that were set up by previous governments.
Milei still seems to have most of the population on his side and tells politicians unwilling to give him their backing that it would be in their interest to take this into account. His critics believe that when people wake up to what his policies mean for them, they will turn against him. And then? This is a question those who want to see Milei fleeing from office by helicopter to escape the attentions of an angry mob are unable to answer.
As Sergio Massa’s term as economy minister should have taught them, politicians who think that the best way to overcome difficulties is to bury them under mountains of freshly printed banknotes have simply no idea of what to do when inflation runs riot. From their point of view, it would be far more sensible to keep a low profile for a year or so to let Milei do the “dirty work” needed to tame inflation and put the nation’s financial accounts in some kind or order. They could then set about unseating him without having to worry about what they themselves would have to do if they were to succeed.
Comments