Accelerations and libertarian disputes | profile

He even hurled some insults. “What a way to complicate these mistakes for me…” Patricia Bullrich roared Thursday about having to delay consideration of labor reform in the Senate after the ruling party secured a Pyrrhic approval of the budget hours earlier in the House of Representatives without a key government chapter.

The diatribe of the new senator, the new pro-government voice in the committee, was not only directed against opponents who want to stop the handling of changes in the labor market. He also targeted the wavering dialogueists, particularly those who failed to secure support in the House of Commons.

The anecdote ends by expressing once again the difficulties of Javier Milei’s management in obtaining legislative approvals at the times and in the manner he intended. The frustration is even more evident as the ruling party, after winning the elections in October and reconstituting the Congress, accelerated to win the Olympic round before even entering the game.

As if to confirm his irritation, this Friday the 19th, Bullrich avoided an escalation of the conflict with allies in the Senate and confirmed in committee the budget presented in the MPs with the idea that it should be discussed and come into force on Friday the 26th, in the middle of the holidays.

This would exclude the already famous Chapter 11 from the fiscal norm, with which the government has raised the specter that if ignored it will endanger the fiscal balance.

This extensive section covered many measures. These include repealing the state of emergency funding for universities and the disability system (which Congress imposed this year on the government, which ignored it in implementation) and redefining how the nation pays the debt that the nation owes to CABA for co-participation. None of this will be done through the budget, but the executive is already looking at how this can be done through other means.

It was known from Casa Rosada before the Chapter 11 case that Milei was exploring the possibility of vetoing the law due to this deficiency. The version was explained as part of a strategy to put pressure on the Senate’s dialogue section to replace the fragment in question. Also so that Bullrich would do everything and even more to achieve this goal.

The former security minister preferred to avoid burning ships. “The deputies screw it up and I have to fix it?” They say he complained. He appreciated the haste in drafting the budget and omitted Chapter 11.

Bullrich was already defeated at the end of the week because he had to give in to the labor reform passed by the Senate, which was ultimately only discussed in February and not before the end of the year. The same applies to the new glacier law.

According to people close to him, he should have taken his foot off the accelerator because of the setback in the Chambers of Deputies with Chapter 11 of the Budget, not because of the CGT law in Plaza de Mayo (massive, but nonetheless testifying).

And just in case, Bullrich sent a message to Minister Luis “Toto” Caputo: “Let’s leave it as it is, because if the governors are encouraged, they will get more out of us.”

In Bullrichism and other libertarian sectors, some bills for the gaffe are being introduced in the House of Commons. And they blame the Minister of the Interior, Diego Santilli, and the President of the Chamber, Martín Menem, for this. “They said we had the number to fix everything, and that’s not true,” was the mildest accusation.

Inside the purple planet, there is speculation that the renewed intrigue may be related to the inner intrigue that never goes away. Advisor Santiago Caputo has been excluded from the current legislative tricks. Are you looking for revenge?

Nor did Caputo take part in the negotiations that those who champion the dogmatic Mileista narrative least expected: the agreement with Kirchnerism to place the three representatives of the Chamber of Deputies at the disposal of the Auditor General of the Nation (AGN).

A libertarian, a Kirchnerist and an auditor close to Salta governor Gustavo Sáenz received their appointments to the AGN, to the outrage of the PRO and Mauricio Macri, who had former minister Jorge Triaca in the hunt for one of these posts.

The yellow anger turned into anger when they learned that the agreement was carried out directly by Martín Menem in dialogue with Máximo Kirchner. Cristian Ritondo, the chairman of the miserable PRO bank, is threatening to appeal to the judiciary. A moment of effervescence or the prologue to a breakup?

Perhaps this mini-crisis between the allies is an alarm signal for a potentially larger fear: that LLA and Kirchnerism will face a broader and more formal conversation on more sensitive issues.

One of them, for example, would be the formation of the Supreme Court and the appointment of the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Both forces are needed to get two-thirds of the Senate to approve these promotions.

Always disputed, during the first biennium of Milei there were already attempts by the Minister of Justice Sebastián Amerio with Senator Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro and the Minister of Justice Axel Kicillof, the camper Juan Martín Mena.

Amerio, who was close to the advisor Caputo and would have lost the influence he once gained due to his low price, went even beyond that of the former resigning minister of the region, Mariano Cúneo Libarona. He withdrew his resignation and remains in office at the request of his sister Karina.

This possible approach to Kirchnerism would depend precisely on the Secretary General of the Presidential Office untying the legal knot of vacancies.

In addition to the “successful” process that Martín Menem has carried out with the AGN, his cousin Eduardo “Lule” Menem and the national representative of the LLA, Santiago Viola, would have the Carinist mandate to face the talks. At what price?

Despite self-inflicted falls and avoidable clumsiness, the Milei are making progress.