The fiscal flag facing political wear and tear
The Executive's argument was simple: approving the university law meant expanding spending and putting the goal of balance at risk. The fiscal reasoning is impeccable, but it ignores the symbolic value of public university, which in Argentina is not just another service but a culturally rooted right. By vetoing it, Milei not only contained spending: he chose to confront a historically legitimized and socially defended actor.
This calculation reveals a dangerous logic: to believe that the political cost is a secondary problem compared to the purity of the economic program. But in a country where the university condenses aspirations for social mobility and cultural legitimacy, the veto sounds less like fiscal discipline and more like an act of intransigence.
A crisis on multiple fronts
The context amplifies the effects. The government arrives at this showdown with diminishing political capital:
A social fabric battered by inflation and falling incomes.
Unions, universities, and health professionals in a state of confrontation.
Irritated governors over the reduction of transfers.
A fragmented Congress, where Milei can only govern by decree and veto.
The veto, then, is not an isolated measure: it is another piece on a board where conflict escalates and the margin for maneuver shrinks.
Between consistency and viability
The paradox is brutal: Milei maintains the coherence of his economic plan, but is rapidly losing political capital. Fiscal balance has yet to translate into visible improvement in people's pockets or in growth expectations. And without tangible results, the narrative of adjustment as a path to prosperity begins to wear thin.
Governability, in this framework, rests on fragile pillars: the image of the president as an incorruptible outsider, the expectation of future stabilization, and the approval of a segment of the market that celebrates fiscal orthodoxy. But that foundation erodes day by day in the face of a lack of consensus, legislative blockage, and a street that threatens to become ungovernable.
The ambivalent signal to the markets
For the financial world, the veto can be read in two ways. The first, positive: Milei reaffirms his willingness to pay political costs in order to maintain fiscal discipline. The second, risky: without minimal governability, the implementation of deep reforms could be thwarted, along with the credibility of the economic program.
The university case, ultimately, is a mirror of the Argentine situation: an exhausted country, with rising poverty and a fragile social fabric, facing a president who is betting everything on a technically consistent but socially corrosive plan. Fiscal consistency without politics may be celebrated on Wall Street, but in Buenos Aires, it translates into isolation and conflict.
The question, then, is not whether Milei is capable of maintaining a zero deficit. The real question is whether Argentina can politically sustain the social cost of that experiment.
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