In an interview on Wednesday night (20), Milei said that the vice-president does not participate in ministerial meetings, “has no influence and does not take part in the decisions” of the government. He stated that she is “closer to the caste”, which he opposes, than to his administration. The last photo of the two together was in a battle tank during the military parade on July 9th, a historic date in Argentina.
As vice president of the country, Victoria Villarruel is also president of the Senate, where the government, as well as in the Chamber of Deputies, does not have a majority of votes to approve its projects. Normally, in the Argentine case, the vice-president can also fulfill the role of negotiator with the senators and have the casting vote in the votes. This was what happened in 2008, when Julio Cobos was vice-president of former president Cristina Kirchner and voted in favor of agricultural producers and against the project defended by her. The two did not speak to each other. The recent history of Argentina also records the case of then vice-president Carlos ‘Chacho’ Álvarez, who in 2000, accused the government he was part of, led by former president Fernando De la Rúa, of corruption. That was when the De la Rúa government entered a spiral of crisis that ended in 2001, two years before the end of its mandate. De la Rúa’s departure occurred for a number of reasons, including the confiscation of bank accounts.
The situation seems different now, but this is a chapter that cannot be ignored in the Milei administration, which shares, as he likes to say, federal decisions with his sister, Karina Milei, general secretary of the Presidency.
The president appears extremely confident with the direction of his government, with the drop in inflation rates, with the election of Donald Trump to the White House and with the dialogue with the president of China, Xi Jinping. The two presidents and their teams met in a bilateral meeting during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. In the campaign for Casa Rosada, last year, Milei had said that, if elected, his government would have no relationship with “the communist dictatorship”, in reference to China. But the reality is different from the campaign platform. In addition to direct investments in the country, China is Argentina’s second trading partner and made a type of loan to the country, through a currency swap.