Governor Maximiliano Pullaro: ‘The truth is people are doing very badly’

Santa Fe Province Maximiliano Pullaro accused Javier Milei of being “disconnected with reality” after the show performed by the President Javier Milei on Monday night at the Movistar Arena as he promoted a new book. 

In conversation with Modo Fontevecchia, a live show on Net TV and Radio Perfil (AM 1190), the provincial leader also warned that there is great unrest in the nation’s productive hinterland. “The countryside, industry and Argentina are doing very badly,” he complained.

Pullaro served as a provincial deputy for Santa Fe from 2011 to 2015. He was also the region’s security minister between 2015 and 2019 and today is its current governor, a position he assumed in December 2023 – the same month Milei took office.

I think what you’re doing at Provincias Unidas is very important, building consensus not only for 2027, but for the process that will take us from December 10, 2025 to 2027. The President was in your province at the weekend – he did not do well. Why do you think the climate towards the president is different in Santa Fe from Entre Ríos, or whether it was just the same, but in Entre Ríos he was more protected by his electoral alliance?

There’s great unrest, not only in Santa Fe, [but] in the entire productive hinterland. We experience the countryside and industry and we’re proud, and we always present ourselves thus, from a productive Argentina, from an Argentina putting faith in work, in production. And the truth is we’re doing very badly, people are doing very badly. The countryside, industry and Argentina are doing very badly, so there are protests in Santa Fe. 

People in my province are calm, those protesting were left-wing organisations because the President had said he would go to the capital’s pedestrian street. Then he ended up going to the port – a federal zone guarded by the Coast Guard. But at no time did he ask for the cooperation of the provincial police, which was there, but not in the same security operation as the President’s, but a coordinated effort.

Or not coordinated, shall we say...

Not coordinated by the decision of the Military and I don’t question that decision, but from that standpoint it’s perhaps more difficult to provide security because you don’t know what the steps will be. Yes, there was hostility in Santa Fe, and fewer crowds too. From La Libertad Avanza there must have been 300 or 400 people. I think in Entre Ríos – since Governor Rogelio Frigerio supports La Libertad Avanza’s project – there was a bit more volume and muscle and he had a better time there. But Argentina is just not doing well, and it’s very difficult to campaign right now.

I was watching this morning and late last night the show [by the President at the Movistar Arena], and I felt a disconnect with reality, because many people are having a very hard time. There are people suffering, people who can’t make ends meet, people who have to lower their quality of life, or school, or health insurance, or expenses, or rent. And that ends up making you feel very bad. And the President shows himself as a rockstar when we’re not doing well. 

He looked like a person treating himself in life. When you have days of administration in four years, you can’t dismiss any of them, not one morning, not one afternoon. And yesterday they were having fun like everything was going swimmingly in Argentina and the truth is that’s not the case.

What do you think will happen after December 10 in the relationship between the President and governors in general, those of Provincias Unidas in particular, which with Corrientes now are six?

I believe it depends on the President and the model of administration he intends to carry out, whether he wants to be helped or not. Provincias Unidas came about as an emerging movement at this juncture, because the mistakes made by the government risked a return of Kirchnerism to Argentina. We believe that’s a stage society has already got over, but given fear, it could fall over there.

From that standpoint we understood we had to build a Republican, democratic, dialogue, sensible administration alternative, where we had to tell the neighbours of our country that there is an alternative – that it’s not all black and white, that it’s not all the extremes they want to lead us to. And that’s where this political alternative comes in, not a third lane, but a model of administration which proposes the next president, and the first step is having a major legislative caucus which helps us make Argentina do well, but of course looking at 2027 [and the Presidency] as a goal. The country must have a chance to be properly administered.

Like Juan Schiaretti said, reasonableness would be the point.

We need sense. I sometimes struggle to understand national politics. I was never in Congress, I never had a nationwide party position. I really struggle to understand the logic. There’s a lot of aggression here. It’s difficult for everyone to sit down to talk at a table. Here it seems that the political leadership communicates via TikTok, or Instagram reels or likes on X. And we must have the capacity to sit down at a table, to talk, to listen to each other, to stop believing our truth to be the only truth.

You come from a province with a particular feature. Santa Fe, unlike Córdoba, was always outside polarisation. Would it be fair to say that what you’re seeing looking towards 2027 is that the polarisation in Buenos Aires Province is a phenomenon within the province, but that the country will keep a system of thirds and that in that system there must be a replacement for Juntos por el Cambio, which started to disappear, and that Provincias Unidas comes to fill that role?

I’m convinced of that. I believe Kirchnerism is waning in Argentina and it will wane further, regardless of Kicillof’s triumph, which has other local characteristics. It’s as I tried to show the June 29 election we had here in our province, where we won 76 percent of constituencies. If you look at the map, it was all red but you’re forcing that reading. This is a nationwide election and in that nationwide election there will be an intense debate where there is a waning and retracting Kirchnerism. 

Schiaretti defines it well, it’s like a small flame going out. Kirchnerism has no chance of coming back because it’s a model that’s been exhausted and the melancholy many can have there will be exhausted.

Milei is letting a lot of people down. First, they voted for him to put an end to the caste, but he ends up being surrounded by people who have been in politics for years. He can’t solve the problems, and now he has more serious problems, corruption issues – like the [Diego] Spagnuolo case [involving alleged corruption at the ANDIS national disability agency]. 

It’s extremely serious for a senior official within the government to talk about how bribes were distributed in the government and there was never a clear explanation about that. So that ends putting everyone who finds it hard to explain in a mire. Now, this Espert case. The courts will consider the level of guilt.