Guillermo Francos, a seasoned politician in the middle of Miley’s war against “caste”

The most senior member of Javier Mieli’s cabinet, Guillermo Franco (Puerto General Belgrano, 74 years old), now president of Argentina, is the top contender to implement his law to dismantle the state and regulate the economy. With a recognized negotiating talent and extensive knowledge of the behind-the-scenes of politics, Franco left the Ministry of the Interior to take over as chief of ministers and sent a signal of negotiation and moderation to the Senate, where the law has been stuck for several weeks.

Unlike his boss, Franco is the quintessence of a traditional politician: he wears a suit with a tie and restrained language. Miley accuses and attacks opposition leaders on social networks; Franco, experienced in the nineties in Menemist Peronism, invites him to coffee. The son of a Navy vice admiral, he graduated as a lawyer from the University of Salvador in 1974, and has survived many political battles since then. The last battle, fought within his government: he was in a difficult position, but now he has won the battle against those who despised his negotiating strategy.

Francos began in politics with the defunct Federal Party, founded by a retired military man, as a Buenos Aires city councilor between 1985 and 1994. His party supported the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Angeloz of the Radical Civic Union in 1989. But he switched sides the following decade and chose moderate Peronist Carlos Menem before joining with Domingo Cavallo, the minister of “convertibility” of the peso with the dollar, and founding another short-lived party, Action for the Republic. Francos was head of a group of 13 deputies while the severe economic crisis that emerged in 2001 began to take shape. He resigned his seat in the Senate due to “moral fatigue” amid a bribery scandal and for economic reasons.

“I have five children, and with this salary I can’t even afford the prepaid (private medical insurance),” he said when he said goodbye to public management and joined the Corporación América business group as director of Aeropuertos 2000. His family has since expanded: Francos’ sixth child was born eight years ago, the result of his third marriage.

In the private company he met Miley and now his replacement, Nicolás Posse, although from there he returned to the public sector at intervals. First in 2007 as president of Banco Provincia, then as head of the Buenos Aires government alongside Daniel Scioli, whom he later helped promote in his unsuccessful presidential candidacy. In 2019, after the return of Peronism to power, Alberto Fernández appointed him Argentina’s representative before the Inter-American Development Bank.

He resigned with an acrobat’s leap: he joined Miley’s presidential campaign. The shift in favor of this experienced but low-profile politician did not go unnoticed by liberal voters and, upon winning the election, Franco received the interior portfolio. For nearly half a year, he was the political face of the government in the face of provincial governors angry at funding cuts ordered by the president. He kept the channels of communication open amid insults from one side to the other and thus helped calm several internal crises. Now, promoted to the position of chief of staff, his mission is redirected to the Senate. Miley wants legislation approved that gives him a free hand to privatize state companies, close public organizations, and eliminate limits on the movement of private goods and capital. Without that legislation, your chainsaw makes a lot of noise but has little power.

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