Karina Milei: Argentina’s real president

Popular actor Guillermo Francella has announced that he will bring to the celebrated play Being There (Desde el jardín in Spanish) to the stage, a novel which Peter Sellers adapted and immortalised in film. President Javier Milei will likely enjoy it: a great script paired with  an actor he so admires.

The story is a tragicomedy about a solitary man named Chance, whose life is limited to watching television and tending to the garden of a wealthy man who eventually dies. Through a twist of fate, the gardener ends up becoming a popular and influential politician. The audience knows, however, that he is a man with limited intellectual capacity, unable to understand reality, repeating phrases with little meaning, which others interpret to be logical and even brilliant.

By coincidence, in both domestic political circles and on social media, people have begun recalling this famous film from the late 1970s, seeking a supposed parallel between its character and Argentina’s current president.

It is true that both the stories of Chance and Milei are united by an underlying drama, though they are different.

Milei’s story is that of a mistreated boy who, in order to survive blows, bullying and solitude, sought refuge in a parallel reality. In that intimate universe, his dogs do not die but go to heaven and become superior beings and his sister is a heroine who always defended him and acquired the power to communicate with those in the afterlife.

Whereas Chance understands reality through his limited knowledge about the care of plants, Milei views the world through his eccentric anarcho-capitalist theory and the mystical revelations transmitted to him by sister Karina.

Chance is followed by multitudes who admire him, but he feels empathy only for the plants and the owner of the house he inhabits. Something similar occurs with Milei in relation to his dogs and his sister.

Yet unlike Chance, who does not understand or share the devotion others feel for him, Milei sees himself as a divine chosen being – a unique figure of planetary dimensions deserving of all admiration.

Nowhere in the script Francella will take to the theatre does a character appear who comes to acquire greater importance than the protagonist himself, but that is what is happening in the Milei story. 

A figure who, at the start of the La Libertad Avanza leader’s government, seemed to be secondary has quickly revealed herself to be the true power within the state.

That is what Karina Milei represents today.

In all but name

President Milei has always said his sister is the real “boss” of his administration, that he reports to her. Many assumed Milei was not being literal, that his words were understood as meaning she was his “right hand.” In the same metaphorical sense, he has claimed Karina is Moses and that he is merely Aaron, the prophet’s brother, communicating her message.

Now it is becoming clear that Milei speaks literally, not metaphorically. 

The President is convinced that she is “an angel,” as he has explained in interviews, and attributes to her a supernatural gift for communicating with beings no longer in this world. Like his late dog Conan, whom Milei insists is still alive (he died eight years ago), because he can converse with him through his sister.

In this Argentine version of Being There, Milei appears to share the limelight with Chance, but in reality the protagonist is his sister. She is the real power. A kind of unelected president who knows, contains and controls the person who was chosen by Argentine voters to hold office.

This underlines the seriousness of all the allegations surrounding her so far: from the sale of La Libertad Avanza candidacies for cold, hard dollars, to the use of funds from the PAMI healthcare scheme and ANSES social security agency, to the scandals over the ‘$LIBRA’ cryptocurrency and the alleged three-percent kickbacks she received in a bribery scheme.

If these judicial cases move forward and point towards her, the Milei government’s future looks uncertain. Presidents are not expendable – it is usually the subordinates who take the fall to shield those most responsible.

Milei himself admits it: he is prepared to sacrifice any official – except his sister. That is why Eduardo ‘Lule’ Menem, one of Karina’s closest advisers and also implicated in the corruption scheme, is the least of the Milei family’s problems.

Power

If sacking Lule would silence the controversy, the Casa Rosada would not hesitate for a second. The problem is that over the past two years it has become clear that this Menem does nothing without Karina’s consent. He is her right hand man, her friend and the person with whom she discusses every step. 

Lule is Karina. But Javier Milei is also Karina. There are no power triangles in this government. There is a man who exercises absolute power. And there is a woman who controls that man.

The added problem is that the one speaking of corruption inside the Executive is Diego Spagnuolo, Milei’s personal lawyer, formerly a man of extreme trust who visited him most frequently at the Olivos presidential residence after the head of state’s physiotherapist. In leaked audio clips, he can be heard warning: “You can’t play dumb,” telling Milei he had the message exchanges with Karina.

The underlying question is the one posed by Spagnuolo: how did Karina go from baking cakes and tarot-reading to wielding so much power?

Although the real question is why the President ceded that power to her.

The simplest answer may be the most accurate and painful. Karina Milei’s greatest aptitude is not building a party structure, pressuring officials to squeeze legislators, governors and journalists, or negotiating special conditions with businessmen selling to the state. Her greatest talent is having made (whether willingly or not) her brother dependent on her in every sense.

She is the one who steadies him when he falters emotionally, who always handled his accounts, who mediated with their parents and – above all – who convinced him (perhaps believing it herself) that she is able to transmit the supposed missions that “The One” entrusts to Javier.

When he calls her “Moses,” it is because he likens her to the prophet who, according to the biblical account, communicated directly with God. That is the condition he attributes to Karina.

The Sorcerer

The closest messianic precedent is José López Rega, the shadowy secretary of late general Juan Domingo Perón who gained power as his boss aged.

After the leader’s death and the accession to the Presidency of his widow, Isabelita, López Rega became the real power behind the throne behind that government. Known popularly as “The Sorcerer,” he had convinced her that he possessed supernatural powers and could transmit the spirit of Eva ‘Evita’ Perón.

He is thought to have drawn her into corruption cases for which she was eventually convicted.

History does not repeat itself, at least not in the same tragic way.

In any case, as with Chance in Being There, the Milei siblings are protagonists of a story they did not write. One that now threatens to become a meme, a humiliating chant at gigs and football stadiums.

But they are not the authors. It is the social sectors that chose them to star in this national tragicomedy who will also decide how the film ends.