“Casta a la vista, baby” (“caste in sight, baby”). On his X account, the Argentine president, Javier Milei, reposted a montage signed by the designer Nik. He appears there with the appearance of Terminator, ready to fight the enemy, paraphrasing the famous tirade “Hasta la vista, baby” of the cybernetic assassin played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his sights: the deputies and provincial governors who did not support his mega omnibus bill, a vast program of ultraliberal economic reforms emblematic of the president, which was eventually abandoned.
After weeks of negotiations in Congress, where the president’s party, La Libertad Avanza (“Freedom Advances”), does not have a majority, the text which originally contained 664 articles, had already undergone a sacred size. Modifications allowed the approval of the general principle of the law and certain key articles, including the possibility, for the executive, of being able to legislate by decree for one year, in order to respond to the” emergency “ that crosses the country.
While the debates continued to vote on the dozens of articles one by one, in a real twist of theater, the Argentine president finally decided, on February 6, to withdraw his project rather than see it diverted in the search for a consensus. The opposition celebrated the defeat of Javier Milei in his first political test against Congress, which it attributes to the amateurism and obstinacy of the executive and its deputies.
Still through his X account, Javier Milei published a long message immediately. “Throughout the campaign, we said we were going to send our plans to Congress and that politicians were going to have to decide which side of history they wanted to be on.”we read there.
Uncompromising on his plan to deregulate the economy and privatize, the Argentine president criticizes the centrist deputies, who had nevertheless shown themselves willing to support the text, subject to certain modifications, and the governors of the same party for having wanted “maintain their caste privileges” And ” their business “ throughout the negotiations.
“Voted against the people”
These elected officials provoked the wrath of Javier Milei who seems to have a messianic vision of his mandate. Traveling to Israel, then to the Vatican, he published a list of names of deputies described as “traitors” and accused of having “voted against the people”. In a reference to the Old Testament, to illustrate his discontent, he also shared, in Hebrew, the passage from the book of Exodus in which Moses, returning from Mount Sinai, breaks the Tablets of the Law, noting that the people betrayed the covenant made with God in his absence.
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