Like his soul-mate Donald Trump, Javier Milei enjoys firing off aggressive tweets about whatever happens to catch his attention at any given moment. Perhaps both hope that they spark furious debates that will help them dominate the news cycle.
Last week, one such verbal missile exploded in Milei’s face. By making it look as though he had encouraged people to invest good money in what appears to have been a crypto scam that one specialist compared to a Ponzi scheme, in which those who wait too long before pulling out can lose many millions of dollars, he managed to cast doubts on his own personal honesty, his fitness to be president and – what in the long run will probably cause him more problems – the nature of the government that he put together after thrashing Sergio Massa in the November 2023 elections.
Luckily for Milei, few people really think he is a greedy fraudster who tried to take advantage of an opportunity to acquire a nice fortune by gambling in the volatile cryptocurrency market, a newish branch of finance whose workings only a handful of individuals even pretend to understand. After all, Milei is an ideologue at heart, a man of Spartan habits who cares little for the material goodies that obsess so many conventional politicians.
It was Milei’s reputation as an economic seer, plus awareness that a president could do many things that are denied to others, that made his apparent enthusiasm for a dodgy crypto operation enough to send its market price skyrocketing until participants in the game decided that the tokens they were accumulating were worth next to nothing, thereby sending an incredible amount of money into cyberspace.
Many had assumed that if someone as economically savvy as the president was on board, it would be advisable for them to make the most of an opportunity to pocket a great deal of money. In an attempt get out of the hole he stumbled into, Milei insists that, notwithstanding his much acclaimed economic expertise, he knows precious little about the crypto business but that, as a techno-fanatic, he assumed that the start-up he imprudently lent his name to could help raise money that could be funnelled into worthwhile business concerns.
Those who bet on $LIBRA got it wrong. So too did Milei. Though he is trying to steer the county away from the kleptocratic populism that his Peronist predecessors promoted, he provided defenders of the old order with a chance to trip him up. To nobody’s surprise, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her supporters thought the crypto affair had given them the excuse to impeach him they had been waiting for, but as it would seem that over half the population has, somewhat belatedly, come to the conclusion that the Kirchnerites and their allies are hypocritical crooks, this looks unlikely to happen.
By associating himself with a cosmopolitan bunch of chancers, Milei has raised serious questions about the government he leads. This was always bound to happen. As an outsider who came from nowhere and had no formal links with any established political party, on assuming power Milei simply had to make do with men and women who had rallied to his movement when it was just getting started. In addition to those who for long had shared his admiration for deceased Austrian economists or had been disappointed by Mauricio Macri’s failure when in office to carry out the drastic reforms that the county clearly needed, there were many who simply wanted to belong to a viable political grouping that would be willing to accept them in the hope that they could then be assured of a decent living in a society in which having access to political power has always made it easy to acquire money.
Separating the opportunists from the true believers, and the useless from the genuinely capable, is a difficult task. Unfortunately for Milei, La Libertad Avanza, the party his sister Karina is organising for him is still a makeshift affair. It may be able to win many votes in the upcoming elections, but even if it does it will be in no shape to help him govern in an efficient and law-abiding manner.
Milei’s image as a multifaceted guru who knows exactly what must be done to cure Argentina’s many ills and, while about it, those of the rest of the planet, has made him the most powerful politician in the land and a “rock star” for the global “new right” that is spreading panic among “progressive” elites throughout the developed world. It has also gone to his head; he feels that for all members of the government his every word must be regarded as holy writ. Those who are rash enough to blaspheme against it are liable to be “guillotined,” as it has become fashionable to say, by Karina, a lady who before being appointed to a job that put her very near the top of the political pyramid was a Tarot-card reader. As well as giving her brother the emotional support he allegedly needs, she decides who should be allowed to meet him and who should be shunned. Did Karina open the doors of the Pink House to let in the crypto crowd that wanted the president to back their product? This is a question many people are now asking.
Among those who would like to see her sent packing are Macri and other PRO heavyweights. They have good reasons for wanting Karina and Santiago Caputo, another member of the so-called “iron triangle” that is in charge of the country, to be sidelined, because they are the main obstacles to a closer alliance between their own party and the one Milei’s sister is improvising, in which they would be treated with the modicum of respect they think they deserve. In their eyes, Karina is a power-hungry operator who wants to put an end to Macri’s political career so Milei can lord it over the anti-Peronist majority. Naturally enough, the former president and his friends have no desire to become bit-players in a political order dominated by Milei, a decidedly self-centred man with authoritarian characteristics who nonetheless has acquired the habit of giving far too much power to cronies who in their view are either untrustworthy or incompetent, because he has no desire to waste his time on political haggling when he could spend it trying to save Western civilisation from itself.
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