"Casta a la vista, baby" ("Caste in sight, baby"). On his Instagram account, Argentine president Javier Milei posted a montage signed by cartoonist Nik on Friday, February 9. In the image, Milei appears in Terminator guise, ready to fight the enemy, paraphrasing the famous tirade "Hasta la vista, baby" by the cybernetic assassin played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his sights are MPs and provincial governors who failed to support his mega-bill, a vast program of ultraliberal economic reforms emblematic of the president, dubbed the "Omnibus Law," which was eventually abandoned.

After weeks of negotiation in Congress, where the president's party, La Libertad Avanza, does not have a majority, the text which originally comprised 664 articles had already undergone quite a pruning. The general principle of law and certain key articles were approved, including the possibility for the government to legislate by decree for one year, in response to the country's crisis.

As the debates to vote on the dozens of articles continued one by one, the Argentine president eventually decided, on February 6, to withdraw his text rather than see it sidetracked in the search for a consensus. The opposition celebrated Milei's defeat in his first political test in Congress, attributing it to the amateurism and obstinacy of the executive and its MPs.

Milei published a lengthy message in the aftermath on his X account. "Throughout the campaign we've been saying that we're going to send our projects to Congress and that politicians are going to have to decide which side of history they want to be on," it read.

Uncompromising about his plan to deregulate the economy and privatize, the Argentine president criticized the centrist MPs, who had shown a willingness to support the text subject to certain modifications, and the governors of the same party, for wanting to "maintain their caste privileges" and "their business" during the negotiations.

These elected representatives have provoked Milei's wrath, who seems to have a messianic vision of his mandate. On a trip to Israel and then to the Vatican, he published a list of names of deputies described as "traitors" and accused of having "voted against the people." In a reference to the Old Testament, to illustrate his discontent, he also shared, in Hebrew, the passage from the Book of Exodus where Moses, returning from Mount Sinai, breaks the Tablets of the Law upon realizing that, in his absence, the people had betrayed the covenant made with God.

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