One day in mid-2020, Karina Milei had a revelation: God communicated to her that her brother had to delve into politics since it had been prophesied that he would be President.
When he became a national deputy the following year, she again assured her brother that this was his path, despite most of his entourage wanting him to run for mayor of Buenos Aires City in 2023. The night before the presidential run-off against Sergio Massa, she insisted along the same metaphysical lines. “God has already prophesied your victory,” she told him.
Now history is repeating itself – in the days before the midterms, when pessimism was the dominant mood in and around the government, there was only one person close to the President who trusted in La Libertad Avanza obtaining an overwhelming triumph.
Whether via an enormous coincidence, a finely calculated strategy or indeed by the work of a divine plan, what is certain is that events again proved the younger Milei child right. This triumph, which she feels to be her own, was the moment she had been waiting for. Now, not even her brother will be able to restrain her.
On the attack
A few days before the elections, Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona drafted his resignation. Sick and tired of the double chain command within his portfolio – top presidential advisor Santiago Caputo has empowered one of his soldiers, Sebastián Amerio – and keen on living abroad, with his ears burning from listening to the entreaties of his wife, Cúneo Libarona took the decision and even leaked it to the media, via Clarín and Infobae.
The decision was well on the way when Karina learned about it. Fearful that Cúneo Libarona would clear the way for a man handpicked by the “Kremlin Wizard,” the presidential chief-of-staff asked the lawyer to hang on a while longer in his post. No sooner said than done: what Karina wants, Karina gets.
Some time ago, something similar had happened. The day after La Libertad Avanza’s electoral defeat in Buenos Aires Province last September, most of the government wanted to see the back of Eduardo ‘Lule’ Menem, one of her top allies. The supreme sister’s factotum, detested through and through by Caputo’s people, faced denunciations of corruption at the ANDIS national disability agency. A letter of resignation had been requested – until the news reached Karina’s ears.
The two episodes show the growing power of Karina Milei over the government, a correlation of the emotional and spiritual monopoly which she always had over her brother. In the run-up to the elections, her internal enemies hung onto a hope: an electoral failure hitting the person responsible for assembling the lists, somebody who had insisted on having libertarian candidates in the 24 districts against the thesis of Caputo, the presidential advisor who preferred to seal alliances with allied governors.
Indeed, prior to the ballot-boxes being opened, Caputo and his people had let half the Argentine press know that the “wizard” had everything ready to take control of the Cabinet chief’s office, the Interior Ministry and some other posts. Another mirage: after the Buenos Aires Province elections, the advisor had set the same ball rolling over his so announced “takeover.” On both occasions, those media operations had reached the ears of Karina Milei, who, every time she sees her enemy’s name written up by the press, also sees the consultant’s hand behind it.
Those absorbed in that infighting rapidly understood the first message of that electoral Sunday. During the afternoon, when the results were still not known but rumours of a libertarian triumph were already beginning to grow, the presidential chief-of-staff did something unprecedented: for the first time in her political history, she decided to talk to the press. Not that she had not done so beforehand, very sporadically, but every time it occurred to her, she worked ahead of her public appearance with her team, rehearsing and repeating the phrases and preparing herself. Election day saw that “killer” instinct she carries in her blood – at the door of the Hotel Libertador, with Martín Menem by her side, she highlighted the work of both “as the president and vice-president of the party.” The message was as clear as water, an idea which in the following days she and her team would make known: the great architect of the triumph had been Karina.
Now the presidential chief-of-staff has the courage to dream bigger, with Karina’s sidekick Manuel Adorni installed as the next Cabinet chief. The supreme sister’s insistence on that post placed everything in doubt, quite apart from the spokesman’s scant interest in moving to the Buenos Aires City Legislature. Karina also activated another old yearning of her team, especially ‘Lule’ Menem – attacking Caputo’s slush funds, beginning with state-run YPF, desired not only for its importance but also the access to friendly media which having the biggest state advertising budget signifies. The SIDE intelligence services, another area controlled by Caputo, is also in the crosshairs.
On Caputo's side, they are preparing for battle. On the one hand, there is an operation to attribute the victory to the “forces of heaven,” arguing that the electoral success was due to the “wizard’s” contributions to the campaign – especially the narrative that “the effort is worthwhile” as seen in the President’s speeches, in different spots and the presidential rallies like the Movistar Arena. That is not the only line of combat. The other is to charge a high price for “obliging” Caputo to take office, something which the advisor has resisted for almost two years, to the annoyance of much of the Cabinet, who saw him putting his hands in all the tills without paying any legal cost since he did not sign anything. At time of writing, this coin was still in the air although most of the government began to assume that the “mago” would end up with some kind of formal post.
With this state of affairs, the hegemonic draw between the two sides will most probably continue but the difference is that Karina is even further empowered. The President, who tends to confuse affectionate links with those friendships he never had, resists parting company with his “soulmate.”
There's a team
In the small hours of that Sunday, the X account of ‘Lule’ Menem clicked into action for a second time. The first had been some months previously, when he released a communiqué to disassociate himself from a developing graft scandal. Now, it was the time to boast: “For the first time LLA has presented itself as a nationwide party in an election. That was made possible by the President’s leadership and the tireless work of party chair Karina. Without that effort nothing would have been possible.”
The next day Lower House Speaker Martín Menem said the same when interviewed by the La Nación + news channel. When asked about the government infighting, he minimised his rivals while explaining: “We follow Karina’s path.” All the rivals of “the Muslims,” as they are contemptuously called by some, see the same thing behind these messages: the intention of using the presidential chief-of-staff as a catapult.
“It’s not that they assembled a government party, they put together a Menem party responding to them, not the government,” said one rival deputy, speaking off-the-record.
The thesis is that most of La Libertad Avanza’s national candidates topping the lists – and now heading for Congress – were handpicked by the Menems. Rivals highlight the cases of Jujuy (Alfredo González), Catamarca (Adrián Brizuela), Formosa (Atilio Basualdo), Chaco (Juan Cruz Godoy) and Neuquén (Nadia Márquez), among others. Thanks to this push, Martín will be confirmed as speaker and Lule as a key national operator. There is no secrecy about their ambitions – the family dreams of seeing Martín as the governor of La Rioja, while for the present they want to extend their Congress influence to the Senate.
The case of Sebastián Pareja is similar. The man who sent his people to chant: “Pareja leadership” at the victory bunker imagines himself as a possible governor of Buenos Aires Province in 2027. To back up his pretensions, he has a score of provincial legislators (whom he selected personally when closing the lists in Buenos Aires Province) and four national deputies (including himself) apart from chairing LLA in the province. What margin would Karina Milei have if she wanted to shift to another candidate? It’s a looming problem because newly installed Interior Minister Diego Santilli has already expressed in public his intentions of running for governor. The battle between both is only a question of time, as José Luis Espert – who had several clashes in the past with Pareja for the same spot – might well attest.
The Buenos Aires Province fixer is experiencing moments of ecstasy. On October 28 he sent an “emotional” audio to the 135 libertarian representatives in each Buenos Aires Province district – a barely subtle way of marking territory – and at the same time one of his local party bosses, Moreno’s Ramón ‘El Nene’ Vera, ensured that the whole government was aware of Pareja punching Esteban Glavinich, a troll known in the social networks as @traductorteama. That was at a San Nicolás hotel, after Milei toured Rosario, the product of annoyance with his tweets close to Caputo, although the troll is nominally a free electron According to Vera, the punch of Pareja, long a Greater Buenos Aires Peronist, was bang on target and a knockout.
In another party the news of such empowered fixers might perhaps be good for the person supposedly controlling them. Here history points elsewhere – when the younger Milei broke up with Carlos Kikuchi, the national operator until the presidential triumph, ‘El Chino’ formed his own caucus in the Buenos Aires Province Legislature with nine deputies and three senators. Will history repeat itself? For now the one advancing full speed ahead is Karina Milei.
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