Electoral blank cheque – is the worst version of Milei yet to come?

Argentina’s government is celebrating an unexpected result that astonished pollsters, President Javier Milei and Peronism alike. La Libertad Avanza secured almost 41 percent of the national vote, gaining more than 60 new seats in Congress. The ruling party not only won in key provinces such as Santa Fe and Córdoba, it also overturned September’s result in Buenos Aires Province, narrowly beating Fuerza Patria by turning around a 14-point deficit. Diego Santilli, who headed the list there following José Luis Espert’s forced resignation, pulled off a shock victory against his Peronist rival, the spectral Jorge Taiana, for whom the campaign proved too big a challenge.

The problem behind the euphoria is how the government will interpret this outcome. If it takes it as a blank cheque, as everything suggests, what we will see from now on will likely be the worst version of Milei: a radicalised one, armed with bulletproof conviction that his “chainsaw and cheap dollar” formula is the right path.

How can anyone explain to him that he has lost 15 points compared with the 2023 presidential election, when Peronism has just been defeated on its own turf? How can he be made to understand that, despite the win, his government has had to request two consecutive international bailouts – first from the International Monetary Fund and then from the US Treasury? And that those allowed it to limp through to the elections when everything seemed on the verge of collapse due to market mistrust?

After what has just happened at the polls – against all earlier forecasts – there is simply no reasoning with a President who believes in his own infallibility and privately claims to be chosen by God for his position.

Yet the problems persist. To name one of the most pressing: can the government manage the pressure on the exchange rate and avoid a devaluation, even at the cost of continuing to burn through reserves – not only its own, but also those of the good-natured US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent? And if, on the contrary, what happens in the next few hours is that long-denied but IMF-recommended, US-recommended and market-recommended devaluation, wouldn’t it spark panic among the voters who have just renewed their trust in him? Wouldn’t it immediately push up prices and tear apart Milei’s main banner, the fight against inflation? And if that were to happen, would the President remain electorally competitive enough for the libertarian experiment to survive beyond 2027?

There’s another question: what is expected of Milei from now on? Just as he might convince himself that the ballot box has just handed him a blank cheque, the United States has been urging him that, for the second phase of his administration, he should seek broader consensus with potential allies such as ex-president Mauricio Macri and the non-Peronist governors – in other words, to step out of his own echo chamber and seek dialogue.

That already sounds utopian. Macri and the governors remain distant after recent slights; dialogue is nowhere to be seen. Guillermo Francos – the Cabinet’s lone dove – until just hours ago seemed to be hanging by a thread because of his poor relationship with the empowered presidential advisor Santiago Caputo, who is being touted as his replacement. The same Caputo who, with his troll army on social media, has led the cultural battle that alienates centrist and less ideological voters. Nephew of the other Caputo, Luis ‘Toto’ Caputo, who has already required two financial rescues in recent months to sustain his fiction of a subsidised dollar. What could possibly go wrong?

The polls have spoken; they’ve sent their message, and the President celebrates at his bunker – without journalists, whom, as he says, he doesn’t hate enough. It’s almost a spoiler of what’s to come: welcome to the new phase of a radicalised Milei.