Milei Jubila to Macri: “Maybe I must understand that his time happened”

Javier Milei was radiant on the day after the legislative elections in the city of Buenos Aires, in which he defeated the PRO, the party of former president Mauricio Macri. “Maybe Macri must understand that his time happened,” said President Ultra. Consumed his objective of erecting himself as the main leader of the broad spectrum of the right and antiperonism in Argentina, Milei explained that his next purpose is to advance an electoral agreement with the referents of the PRO – “regardless of Macri,” he said – to face Peronism in the province of Buenos Aires.

Milei’s party, La Libertad progresses (Lla), won the elections of the Argentine capital with 30% of the votes. Secondly, Peronism, with 27%, and relegated to third place, with almost 16%, the pro ended, the force that governs the city since 2007 and that, since then, had never lost a local election in its bastion. Until Sunday. While the elections only renewed half of the 60 deputies of the Buenos Aires legislature, they ended up being the field to define the dispute between Milei and Macri for representing an electorate with related ideas.

“We have been working with many PRO leaders in the province (in Buenos Aires), or not Macri like it (…) The leaders are taking note that the PRO is a tool that was obsolete, which does not serve to end Kirchnerism,” said Milei this Monday, in an interview with the A24 channel. He made it clear that he no longer thinks of Macri as the necessary interlocutor to negotiate an agreement and assumes that the territorial referents of the PRO will approach Lla.

The legislative election in the province of Buenos Aires, the district with the greatest weight in the country, is the next relevant electoral challenge for the Government and is convened in September, a month before national elections. “The entire center of the right will be included (…) the negotiations are very advanced,” said the president and exhibited enthusiastically with the possibility of defeating the list of Peronist governor Axel Kicillof and former president Cristina Kirchner.

Since the scrutiny was known on Sunday night, Milei and his officials insisted that the doors of Lla will be open for all those who share their proposals and want to join. President Ultra referred in particular to the recent meeting between his sister and general secretary of the Presidency, Karina Milei, and three Buenos Aires leaders of weight at the PRO: Deputies Cristian Ritondo and Diego Santilli, and Guillermo Montenegro, mayor of the town of General Pueyrredón.

The mention was not vain. On the one hand, he highlighted the role of Karina Milei. The president calls it “the boss” and in the Casa Rosada they recognize her as the electoral strategist. On the other hand, in the ruling party they believe that it will be precisely the legislators and the municipal leaders who will lead the exodus from the macrismo to the libertarian ranks, to arrive with aspirations to the elections. Those who do so will follow the course that Patricia Bullrich, today Milei Security Minister and until last year holder of the PRO.

The relationship between Milei and Macri reached its moment of maximum tension in the last week. It was a turnaround with respect to 2023, when Macri had supported the Ultra candidate to be elected president. Although throughout the past year the former president gave support in Congress to a minority government, there was never a party agreement or an incorporation of the PRO to the National Administration. Milei intended that the macrismo undergoed its driving, while Macri aspired to conserve autonomy to avoid the dissolution of the party he founded.

The decision to compete each by its side in the capital was the start sign for cross attacks. In the middle of the electoral day, Milei called Macri “weeping” for having denounced the dissemination made by libertarian militants of a false video in which the former president appeared stating his support for Lla. This Monday, when the votes had already settled the pulse between them, the president was lapidary: “For some things (Macri) is large and does not understand them.”