Things are looking up for the Javier Milei Presidency. After mustering the blocking Congress minority needed to uphold his veto of the legislative branch’s university financing bill against most expectations, followed the next day by finally pushing inflation below a monthly four percent, you could be forgiven for thinking things look rosy, but his administration is still a long way from being “condemned to success.” If Blanche DuBois “always depended on the kindness of strangers” in Tennessee Williams’ play, that may not be Milei’s fate forever but for a long time to come.
Perhaps precisely because the defence of current levels of university spending only had a fraction of the fiscal impact of the previously vetoed fuller updating of pensions. With education so crucial in the 21st century, Milei was generally given less chance of sustaining his veto this time around against a more solid majority, but a hodgepodge of a PRO caucus unlikely to tolerate being crowded out of the centre-right spectrum for much longer, a handful of Radical “heroes,” the support of the Misiones provincial government, some strategic absences and various other factors combined to more than double libertarian numbers to 84 deputies – less than a third of the 257-seat lower house but enough to deny the 159 guardians of state universities a two-thirds majority. Pensions and university financing have now been short-changed but any number of challenges considered urgent enough to overri.