The two favors from Peronism that Milei needs to stay in power
The government launched the re-election campaign and is rushing a pact with the stable cast of power. Santilli's objective and the growing possibility of a scenario without primaries. Kicillof's intimate thoughts regarding a confrontation with Cristina.
July 5, 2026 | 00.05
Diego Santilli's assumption as chief of staff and Javier Milei's attendance at the US Independence Day celebration mark the start of the electoral campaign for the government. The goal is to minimize the margin of error and forge agreements with the 14 governors who were at Adorni's farewell. Keep the dollar flat, oil the pact with the judicial family, and lower tensions with the media tanks. Santilli is to politics what Juan Bautista Mahiques is to the judicial family: system men that Milei promised to destroy but now work to save him.
Although polls like those from Inteligencia Analytica show his approval below 30%, Milei pays attention to the numbers from the Aresco consultancy, which has shown a stable but open scenario for several months. According to the measurements that Federico Aurelio does permanently, the Milei administration still retains 40% support, which is not monolithic: 25% is the hard core unconditional, but 15% is still waiting for the Milei plan to have a favorable impact on their pockets. They will support him, they say, as long as things improve, something that remains to be seen.
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Among those surveyed by Aresco, 60% see the economic situation as bad and 35% see it as stable. But within that 35%, there is 20% that demands an improvement in their pockets. Conclusion: 80% of respondents want a different economy than the one Milei offers. The impact of delinquency is also very clear: 50% of those surveyed say they are in debt. Either with banks, platforms, family, or friends. Revenue fell in 10 of the last 11 months (7.4% in June) and since August-September 2025 it has not strung together two months of growth. With this economy, can Milei be re-elected?
The movements of the political system suggest yes. On one hand, the majority of governors align publicly with Milei, the ideologue of an adjustment that bites its own tail but has the backing of Donald Trump. On the other hand, the elimination or suspension of the primary elections would push the tribes of Peronism to go to elections with different lists. Internal party competition, a practice that Peronism abandoned nationally almost 40 years ago, seems impossible, both because of the level of confrontation it could boost and operational issues. "We don't even have the voter rolls," they say in the province of Buenos Aires. They are not updated nor do they include the different party labels that in the last election converged under the Fuerza Patria banner.
After Santilli's assumption, a leader who answers to Cristina spoke with Raúl Jalil to try to convince him that eliminating the primaries was not a good deal. Unpredictable and sinuous, the governor of Catamarca showed himself open to supporting the position of the national PJ, but left a complaint shared by several. "We have to put an end to the interventions of the party in the provinces," he said. Jalil showed in just a few hours what the terminals of a sector of Peronism are: from the Casa (Rosada) to La Embajada (the United States). La Libertad Avanza needs the favor of collaborationist Peronism from Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta, and Misiones to change the rules of the game and advance without rivals in the provinces. Split what has long been artificially united and display a Peronism that looks quite a bit more like Milei than Cristina.
Axel Kicillof thinks that if the government sets its mind to it, it will achieve it. "They always passed all the laws they wanted," the Buenos Aires governor told one of his collaborators when he learned that Milei was back on the attack with the project. Other leaders of federal Peronism warn similarly. "There is no dispersion from the center to the right, the governors who give him the votes are the ones who will carry slates, and there could be the 2003 scenario within Peronism," admits a leader who raises the need to go united. An intermediate possibility, which could benefit the opposition, is that the government accepts the Radicalism's request to include slates and primaries in a new law.
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Milei's maximum objective, the elimination or suspension of the primary elections, would leave Peronism in a scenario more similar to 2003, when Eduardo Duhalde and the historical PJ attorney Jorge Landau designed an engineering feat so that three Peronist candidates would compete separately. At Duhalde's request, Landau agreed with María Servini on a judicial resolution that allowed the PJ to split into three, with the condition that no one use the party symbols. Thus was born the creature of the three formulas that allowed Néstor Kirchner and Daniel Scioli to reach 22% of the votes and provoke the flight of the first Menem.
The most recent precedent in time is 2017, when Cristina formed Unidad Ciudadana and Florencio Randazzo and Alberto Fernández kept the PJ label. That would be the other favor from the broad Peronism to Milei: that the sectors of the opposition that reject the libertarian country persist in division without finding points of agreement and go to separate elections.
If there is a lesson that a large part of Peronism learned from the failure of the Frente de Todos, it is the need for an undisputed leader for the coming stage. Faced with criticism from Máximo Kirchner and questions from Cristina, Kicillof displays a public strategy of non-confrontation. Behind closed doors, the governor has a much cruder view of internal tension. He thinks that a method is underway that Cristina has already applied against other candidates and that now has him as a target. There are two differences: the first is that he does not want to arrive like Alberto nor subordinate himself; the second is that he himself knows that method, was part of it, and practiced it: for example, against Governor Scioli.
In La Plata they say that Kicillof is willing to meet with CFK, but not in this context. A change in the internal climate is needed, and that does not depend on a call but on a "collective task," says a leader who still thinks about the possibility of an understanding. There are not many bridges. If it is not Sergio Massa, a third party with interests that exceed mediation, only names like Verónica Magario, Federico Otermin, and Julio Alak appear, the latter having a historical relationship with Cristina but objected to by Máximo.
The fight for leadership has similarities with the one that once pitted Duhalde against Kirchner or Menem against Duhalde. Cristina sees it differently: she considers that she created Kicillof, first as a national political figure and then as governor. "It's a cannibalistic Peronism," Kicillof told the group of leaders with whom he met in recent days.
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The tensions are over the presidential candidacy but perhaps above all over the province of Buenos Aires, the place that Cristina has always considered the rearguard of her project and that has been the base of Kirchnerism since she beat Hilda "Chiche" Duhalde more than two decades ago. The creator of the Movimiento Derecho al Futuro plans to run a national campaign centered on the province. The numbers from his sector say that he is the only one who measures well - 53% positive image - and that no candidate to succeed him measures much. Unless Massa abandons his presidential plan at the last moment and decides to go fight against Santilli.
At the national level, Kicillof thinks he has no internal rivals and that the Cristina voter will eventually support him, just as they supported Scioli, Alberto, and Massa. But to that, he should add votes in territories always complicated for Kirchnerist Peronism: Córdoba, Santa Fe, and Mendoza. Is that enough?
From an economic perspective, the differences are not perceived. Kicillof is scathing about the Frente de Todos experiment - "We were a disaster," he repeats - and his view is mainly based on the experience of the Frente para la Victoria. "I am going to do Kirchnerism," he says. It depends, of course, on the situation he encounters if he manages to advance his project first within Peronism and then beat Milei. Nothing is simple, as shown by Lula's experience.
In a more complicated situation than ever, Cristina can still surprise. What is not clear is what would be surprising in this context. Or at least that is what the sector that answers to her and the Peronist leadership that visits her and sees her as active as ever expects. The former president has just received a new blow from Horacio Rosatti, Ricardo Lorenzetti, and Carlos Rosenkrantz, the three Supreme Court judges who ordered her arrest a year ago and disqualified her for life from holding public office. They have now ratified the confiscation of Cristina's assets and those of other convicts in the Vialidad case. The supremes did not heed Miguel Ángel Pichetto's argument about the manifest animosity that should disqualify them from judging the leader of a space that initiated impeachment proceedings against them.
Milei, on the other hand, benefited from the ruling of Marcelo Martínez de Giorgi at the request of lobbyist Mauricio Novelli, who removed all plaintiffs from the LIBRA case and deactivated it almost completely. With a historical relationship with Antonio Stiuso and Ariel Lijo, Martínez de Giorgi owes Milei and Mahiques more than a thank you. His wife Ana Juan was proposed by the government to occupy the federal court of Hurlingham for the coming decades and needs Milei to sign the appointment.
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Perhaps to disguise, the frustrated candidate for minister of the Supreme Court banned Adorni from leaving the country. Lijo is awaiting the appointment of his former secretary, Tomás Rodríguez Ponte, as federal judge of Lomas de Zamora. The government, which pushed him for the position, has the necessary votes to approve the nomination in the Senate and it is expected that Milei will appoint him. Rodríguez Ponte is the judicial family: his wife is federal prosecutor Alejandra Mángano, daughter of Alfredo Mángano, historical secretary of Judge Servini. Also linked to Lorenzetti, Rodríguez Ponte has been head of Dajudeco, the wiretapping office that depends on the Court. If the government makes him a judge, Rodríguez Ponte will have reasons to enliven the electoral campaign where Milei is playing for re-election. In his court, the case linking Martín Insaurralde with Jesica Cirio is being investigated.
These are the precautions that the extreme right takes ahead of Milei's re-election. The success of the plan depends on social patience and economic activity. Also on the Central Bank's reserves, which next Thursday will fall sharply again. On Argentine Independence Day, Milei and Caputo will pay 4,300 million dollars to investment funds. Are there dollars to spare? The increase in exports and the collapse of imports widen the trade surplus, but dollars leave through different channels.
Data from the consultancy Estudios Energéticos shows that between January and May 2026, the contribution of foreign currency from energy exports (+4,183 million dollars) could not compensate for the growing deficit from the acquisition of foreign currency for hoarding (US$12,876 million) and the deficit balance of tourism (3,230 million). Added to this is the figure of Foreign Direct Investment, which registered a massive outflow of foreign currency, with a loss exceeding 930 million dollars. Based on data from the Central Bank, the consultancy of Federico Basualdo shows that this is a new milestone within the Milei administration.
