The “Best Government in History” Argentina is hard to reach the legislative elections of October 26. The ultra -right campaign has become a tortuous path. Javier Milei has delivered his fate to a financial rescue from the United States, while the markets do not leave the Argentine peso alone and punish the debt of the fearsome South American country of a cessation of payments. Politics also does not give good news to Milei. The main candidate of La Libertad advances in the province of Buenos Aires, José Luis Espert, acknowledged, forced by the evidence, that he had received $ 200,000 from an entrepreneur for drug trafficking when he tried to be president, without success, in 2019. On Friday night, Espert met with Milei when the rumors of an imminent step to the side. “I don’t get off at all,” the candidate challenged on social networks, a message that the president supported with a replacement.
The change of political cycle overwhelms Milei. Only a few months ago, he boasted before the “mandriles” of the opposition that his fiscal surplus and zero broadcast plan had ended forever with inflation in Argentina. The data accompanied their story: of 25% monthly registered in January 2024, the CPI fell to less than 2% in August. But the model began to show signs of exhaustion due to the impossibility of the Central Bank to accumulate reservations. The fear of a transfer of payments among investors, who began selling their Argentine debt positions. The bonds collapsed and the government had to part with only three days of 1.1 billion dollars to sustain the weight alive. At that rate, the box would be empty in a few weeks, even before the electoral appointment. When the fall seemed inevitable, Donald Trump arrived as a firefighter.
Milei’s Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, traveled this weekend to Washington to hurry Trump’s help. Two weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury, Scot Besent, promised Argentina a Swap (currency exchange) of 20,000 million dollars, a credit without date or amount and even the possibility that the United States includes debt bonds.
The conviction that it would suffice with a promise of support to calm investors crashed with reality. The problem of the announcement was that, without too much clarity, it conditioned him to a triumph of the extreme right in October. And if, on the other hand, Peronism wins, as it did in the local elections of September 7 in the powerful province of Buenos Aires? Confidence in Argentina continued on the soils. Economic turbulence continued and it was necessary to recalculate.
It was Trump El Salvador again. Milei announced as an epic triumph an meeting with the Republican in the Oval Hall scheduled for October 15. It will be the number 13 of the Argentine to the United States, but the first one that aims at an official face to face with its main ally.
The Caputo tour is part of the same aid strategy. The Argentine economy does not resist until the elections without oxygen provided and the aid must arrive earlier than expected. Last Thursday, Besent said he expected the visit of the Argentine minister to serve “to advance significantly with discussions in person.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is especially interested in the support of the Treasury is not just a slap on the shoulder, as until now. Argentina owes more than 40,000 million dollars of the credit that gave Mauricio Macri in 2018 and now another 20,000 million that gave Milei last April. The managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, said Friday that she had argued with Besent about “the broad financial assistance plans in the United States.”
It is not yet clear that he asks the United States in exchange for his generosity. There will be technical issues, no doubt, such as Argentina returns the Swap that he has with China to take away the power from Fire to Beijing in South America. But there will also be policies. Milei has applied an razed land strategy with the opposition, convinced that he did not need it to govern. He broke with the governors who supported him in the first stretch of his mandate, archived his relationship with former president Mauricio Macri and disregarded the assembly of the electoral lists of his party because his name was enough for “La Libertad to drag” at the polls. He is now going through the way.
To rebuild bridges with the governors, Milei resurrected the Ministry of Interior that he had closed. With Macri he met Friday at the Olivos residence and got his support, although it will only be from October 26. With the electoral plan he has not been so lucky. The president is stood in maintaining a deputy candidate in the province of Buenos Aires to Espert, with proven links with Federico Machado, an aviation businessman that the United States intends to judge by trafficing hundreds of kilos of cocaine towards that country. Machado resists his extradition since 2021 thanks to the judicial advice of the lawyer Francisco Oneto, the same one that sponsors Milei in the $ Libra case, the cryptocurrency promoted by the president and caused to be a monumental scam.
José Luis Espert refuses to give up his candidacy. On Thursday night, he recognized through a video recorded having received $ 200,000 from the drug trafficker as payment for an advice in a mine of his property in Guatemala. He had already recognized before the campaign for president of 2019 he used “sometimes” the private Machado plane – the judicial investigation told 34. Milei’s candidate now said in his defense that he did not know what his patron was dedicated to. Milei supported him with the argument that complaints are a “unclean and gross operation mounted by Kirchnerism.”
The candidate continues for now, even against the opinion of government ministers who fear that the election in Buenos Aires will be a disaster. The problem of ultra -right is that it does not have an alternative plan that convenient. Behind Espet on the provincial ballot is Karen Reichardt, an actress who had some fame in comedy cinema in the 1990s without any political experience. Milei personally requested that Reichardt had a prominent place as a candidate for Libertad advances because he loves the pet care program that he drives on public television. And everyone knows about the love that the president has for dogs.
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