Two phenomena overlap: analysts perceive it, protagonists promote it. The acceleration of the crisis of the Milei government – whose projection is uncertain – seems to be accompanied by another process: a budding reformulation of the political system? The post-2001 crack that divided sensibilities with the force of a wall seems to become something more malleable, a transition from brick to plasticine. What is under debate is the need – or not – to build a large anti-mileista front. The journalist Pablo Avelluto, former Minister of Culture of the Macrista government, is one of those emerging from this discussion.
Avelluto defines himself as “democratic liberal” or “progressive liberal.” On Thursday he posted a message on the social network X with a certain air of a countdown. “Put something together, get together, talk, think, imagine, dream of a different government that leaves behind the dark night of Argentine democracy. Audacity, solidarity, social justice and development to defeat authoritarianism. Time is running out,” was what he wrote.
The initial section of this interview revolved around that call, which Avelluto imagines to be multi-party and inspired by the approach of Antonio Cafiero and Raúl Alfonsín in the face of the carapintada threat.
“To put it briefly and perhaps naively, I think this is going to be from the bottom up. It’s going to be the people,” Avelluto said. In his analysis, it will be a tired and distressed fringe of society that will push its representatives to blur certain boundaries and create new ones. The axis of articulation, he maintains, will be to prevent a new mandate for Javier Milei. “The point of convergence is not the past, which in any case is irremediable and debatable,” he expands during the talk with Time. And he adds that the polarization between the two identities that emerged in 2001, Kirchnerism and Macriism, “no longer makes sense.” “Neither of them governs,” he risks.
Avelluto asserts that the key narrative of mileism, the call to sacrifice in the present in pursuit of future prosperity, entered into crisis. “In pursuit of future prosperity at best or the prosperity of others at worst,” he notes ironically. And he adds: “That is a story that was heard many times in Argentina and failed many times.” Like other participants in the public debate, the former PRO official observes a sharp deterioration in living conditions: he relates this daily slide – which is visible in discomfort, fatigue, lack of perspectives – with a curious tweet from Milei himself, usually euphoric. “We know that these last few months have been hard,” the president posted last Thursday.
From this horizon of uncertainty, Avelluto is skeptical about the possibility of successful electoral alternatives that propose some type of mileista continuity, but excluding Milei himself (due to a deterioration of his figure). When this newspaper asked him about a hypothetical presidential candidacy of Patricia Bullrich or the figure of businessman Jorge Brito (h), who in any case do not express the same thing, the journalist and writer remembered a phrase that he once heard from Jaime Durán Barba. “There is a rule that I learned working in Macri’s 2015 campaign, which is from Durán Barba: ‘The Red Circle is always wrong’. You should never believe in what the Red Circle perceives, in its movements, in its tactics. The Red Circle’s hypotheses usually go wrong,” he stressed.
-Polls show Milei at her worst moment. Furthermore, he is at odds with important names of the big bourgeoisie, such as Paolo Rocca and Madanes Quintanilla. Then versions appear about Patricia Bullrich, who measures very well, or about the head of Banco Macro. How do you see these alternatives?
-They all depress me. One more than the other. In 2015, there was strong pressure for Mauricio Macri to team up with Sergio Massa to beat Scioli. The establishment, that is, businessmen and people with interests in politics, pressed in that direction, and there was a large lobby. But nevertheless (Macri) went alone and won that election, barely.
–Economist Ricardo Arriazu recently spoke about the comparative advantages of some sectors (mining, unconventional oil and gas, plus agriculture and its derivatives); also of the disadvantages of the industry, which he defined as backward and uncompetitive. He said that destruction is faster than creation and that in the coming years there will be pockets of poverty, discontent and unemployment…
-With that model there are a lot of people who are left out. Because not all of us can go live in Vaca Muerta. I would raise a thousand observations to what Arriazu says, which is a deep-rooted thought. He is a man listened to in the Argentine establishment and is one of those who share the spirit, the direction, of this government. It is a story that was heard many times in Argentina and failed many times. Meanwhile, people see the difficulty they have in paying their bills. The difficulty in sustaining your job, your business, your professional activity. And although the inflation rate is lower, the same money is enough for less. Inflation still exists and continues to grow above people’s income. Regarding mileism, I think they are discovering late, as governments usually do, that not all those who voted for them did so because of the cultural battle. It is not that half of Argentines became authoritarian, undemocratic with fascist traits. People don’t treat each other like Milei treats Argentines who don’t think like him. This is seen in the polls and in the overwhelming drop in sympathy in the polls, where today more than six out of ten Argentines are against the Milei government.
-Until the democratic recovery of 1983, it was said that the Military Party was the last refuge of the most regressive elites. Some arguments maintain that the role that the coups and the military had today is played by judges and prosecutors. That there is a double standard when condemning Peronist or non-Peronist leaders. What does he say about this?
-The problem with the judiciary is not that all shots go in the same direction. The problem is that the shots go according to interests and not according to what the causes and jurisprudence should determine. That’s the problem. I believe that the ideal solution for this is that we manage to have a judicial power in which we can all believe beyond our political position. On the other hand, the person who had control of the appointments of judges in Argentina for decades was Peronism. A very large majority of the judges currently active passed through a Senate dominated for many years by Peronism. The function that the judiciary performs in our tripartite system of powers is precisely that we remain calm with judicial rulings. And I know that a large number of people who sympathize with Cristina feel that this has not been the case in her case. I think that many feel this in relation to many cases, and I don’t know if it is necessarily only among Peronists or Kirchnerists. In short, I don’t know if there are more than two standards. I think there are many standards…
-You were part of Macri’s government. During those years, the operation of a table that coordinated the judicial management of the then minister (Germán Garavano) was denounced.
-Oppositions build narratives. The idea that the government told the judges what they had to do is something that I never saw, rather we had a few headaches with the judges due to the implications (of their rulings) on the functioning of the economy.
