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08-18-2023

Is madness already coming to Argentina?

Milei represents a dogmatic ideology, which combines economic libertarianism with political conservatism, which, besides not being applied in any country in the world, denies dissent and the possibility of peacefully confronting opinions, that is to say, of practicing political tolerance, which is the basis of democratic coexistence.
By Gabriel C. Salvia

If he becomes President of the Nation on December 10, 2023, Javier Milei will have many limitations to implement the economic, institutional and social reforms he proposes, especially because his government will be in a legislative minority and his intolerant style does not contribute to facilitate political negotiations.

Milei himself acknowledged in his speech at midnight last Sunday, August 13, that his political grouping could obtain 8 seats in the Senate and some 40 in the Chamber of Deputies in October. The upper chamber has 72 national senators and the Chamber of Deputies has 257 legislators. How will Milei be able to fulfill his political promises without violating the democratic institutionality or without allying himself with a part of what he has been denouncing as "political caste"? And how will an eventual Milei government react to the protests that may occur in opposition to his reform initiatives?

In his triumphant speech, Milei mentioned his "liberal hero" and recited his definition: "Liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others". In this regard, during the last military dictatorship, between 1976-1983, a State terrorism was implemented in Argentina that included the suppression of civil and political liberties, with arbitrary arrests and unlawful deprivation of liberty, forced disappearances, torture and murder, all documented in the report "Never Again" of the National Commission for the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP). What did the "liberal hero" that Milei quotes do in those years of lead where so many life projects were put to an end in an arbitrary and criminal manner? Instead of speaking out against those atrocities -as a true liberal, the journalist Robert Cox, did- he founded in 1978 a graduate school to teach market economics... to the military!

In tune with the intellectual incoherence of his "hero", the national deputy Javier Milei represents a dogmatic ideology, which combines economic libertarianism with political conservatism, which, besides not being applied in any country in the world, denies dissent and the possibility of peacefully confronting opinions, that is, of practicing political tolerance, which is the basis of democratic coexistence.

Milei's mistreatment of journalists whose questions make him uncomfortable follows the line of populists Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. And yet he has not yet been asked what he thinks of the Malvinas (a libertarian would propose to privatize them); why he has 32 employees between the Chamber of Deputies and the Buenos Aires legislature whose salaries are paid "through tax theft"; his contradiction of defining himself as a disciple of Alberdi, the author of "The Crime of War", and at the same time in his government program propose increases to the budget of the Armed Forces; what he thinks of Menem's last monopolistic privatization of the 33 national airports, administered by his former employer and sponsor; and how his conservative political positions fit in with the "free to choice for everything" promoted by true libertarianism, the American libertarianism, which includes the right to abortion.

Milei questioned the law on voluntary interruption of pregnancy, which was an example for its legislative process of public discussion, allowing all opinions to be heard and what almost never happens: that a legislator changes his position, which in this case happened because he understood the IVE project as a public health issue. At the same time, Milei defends Menem's governments, whose privatization laws were voted under suspicion of corruption and, in the case of gas, by seating a trumped-up congressman in a seat!

It should be remembered that Milei embraced libertarian ideas only ten years ago and therefore he is going through the period of youthful fanaticism that these ideas provoke, and that along the way he met and then quarreled with respectable moderate referents of these ideas, who claim that the presidential candidate is crazy. Seeing how he reacts to questions that make him uncomfortable and sustaining simplistic, demagogic and unfeasible ideas, there is little doubt that if Milei reaches the Casa Rosada, Argentina will jump into the void.

Gabriel C. Salvia
Gabriel C. Salvia
General Director of CADAL
International human rights activist. Since 1992 he has served as director of Civil Society Organizations and is a founding member of CADAL. As a journalist he worked in graphics, radio and TV. Compiled several books, among them "Diplomacy and Human Rights in Cuba" (2011), "Human rights in international relations and foreign policy" (2021) and "75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Views from Cuba" (2023), and he is the author of "Dancing for a mirage: notes on politics, economics and diplomacy in the governments of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner" (2017). He is also the author of several reports, including " The chairs of the Council: authoritarianism and democracies in the evolution of the integration of the UN Human Rights body" and "Memory closed: The complicity of the Cuban revolution with the Argentine military dictatorship".
 
 
 

 
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