What’s in a name?

Provincias Unidas deputies have opened up a wider issue when they formally requested the new Radical party chairman Leonel Chiarella to alter the label of the Unión Cívica Radical caucus on the grounds that its constant connivance with the Javier Milei administration is “incompatible with the historic principles of Radicalism.” This argument, spearheaded by the deputy Martín Lousteau, who began last month as UCR chairman, is debatable because while Radicalism prides itself on being an inflexible “ethic” which “breaks up rather than bend” in contrast to the Peronism veering wildly between the neo-conservative Carlos Menem and the left-leaning Kirchners, it has also seen numerous ideological variations in its 135 years of history – such former presidents as Marcelo T. de Alvear and Fernando de la Rúa were not far distant from the current UCR line.

All this is small potatoes but it does invite challenges of other party denominations and especially the Milei administration’s widely accepted insistence on calling itself “libertarian.” A President who has not held a single press conference in 25 months, who has weekly fired two senior officials on average for often minor disagreements, assaults enemies with verbal onslaughts and who has slurred most journalists while suing a select few hardly emerges as a liberal icon.

If Milei’s idol Donald Trump can sit down and talk to a Muslim socialist mayor of New York City less than half his age, Milei has no excuse for his stubborn rejection of dialogue with Buenos Aires Province Peronist Governor Axel Kicillof (an age difference of only 11 months although the ideological gap is considerably wider). A Mercosur which urgently needs to enter the 21st century in order to measure up to the free-trade agreement with the European Union being signed in Paraguay today badly needs a working relationship between its two main leaders, Milei and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, yet Milei’s presence in Asunción was virtually conditioned on Lula’s absence. And quite apart from the EU-Mercosur agreement, South America sorely needs a joint stance on the Venezuelan situation in the light of Trump’s intervention – an intervention arguably arising by default from the subcontinent’s inability to address the Bolivarian catastrophe spilling millions of people across its nations.

Perhaps Milei himself has supplied a more useful label than “libertarian” for defining his identity with “General Ancap” (an abbreviation of anarcho-capitalist), the somewhat ludicrous cartoon superhero accompanying his latest social network contributions in English. While there seems a basic contradiction in an anarcho-capitalist heading a state he abhors in all its forms, that contradiction is solved by adding the word “General” reflecting the almost military discipline imposed by the Milei siblings on La Libertad Avanza.

Milei’s aversion to dialogue might seem a fundamentally institutional flaw which does more harm to the country as a whole than his own political interests but it might come back to haunt him electorally. His rapid success has been based to a considerable extent on the widespread feeling that anything is better than Kirchnerism but that movement is imploding so fast with its discredited leader under house arrest, a divided Buenos Aires Province stronghold, its provincial bosses seceding and other leading figures tainted by the scandals of the AFA Argentine Football Association that Milei almost certainly won his last election last October with the slogan: “Kirchnerismo nunca más.”  

Nature abhors a vacuum and if next year’s presidential election sees the emergence of a candidate who can combine a defence of fiscal solvency keeping inflation at bay with dialogue, Kicillof might well follow in Patricia Bullrich’s footsteps as a standard-bearer of the main opposition party in third place in the first round. That candidate has yet to appear and nor is there anybody even on the horizon but everything can change rapidly – think of Bill Clinton in 1992 or José Octavio Bordón (five million votes from nothing) in 1995, both men virtual unknowns in the first half of those years. Or even the outsider Milei himself.

Yet having mentioned Clinton, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that next year’s election will stand or fall on “It’s the economy, stupid.” Will voters be swayed by a second year running of export-led growth, real wage recovery and investment on the rise with country risk moving in the opposite direction? Or will the job problems from the lack of recovery in labour-intensive sectors – a manufacturing sector disrupted by imports, construction denied public works and even retail with the acceleration of online purchases – prove decisive? But plenty of ground to cover until then.