Manuel Adorni resigned on Saturday with an open court case and weeks of accumulated internal pressure. Diego Santilli will be sworn in on Tuesday as his replacement. The Government calls it a relaunch. But the replacement reveals something that the ruling party would prefer not to discuss: that Patricia Bullrich, a senator from the same space, was the one who pushed the most for the exit from within, and that Milei gave her RT three times to validate it.
Adorni’s resignation was made public on Saturday, investigated for alleged illicit enrichment and accumulating internal pressure for weeks. The letter he left when he left was eloquent: he wrote that they had treated him as «a criminal and corrupt without a single act of corruption» behind him, and that his permanence in office responded, according to those who attacked him, to the fact that he had «extorted» them. It’s not the tone of someone who leaves in peace. It’s that of someone who feels like they were pushed.
Who pushed him? This is where the most uncomfortable political problem of the episode begins. Patricia Bullrich, senator from La Libertad Avanza and a figure who migrated from the PRO to the libertarian space, was the most persistent in publicly demanding that Adorni step aside. On Sunday on LN+, she was explicit: she said that Adorni was a «plug» for the legislative agenda and that without a change in the Chief of Staff, projects such as labor reform were going to remain blocked. It is not the language of an ally who adds her voice to a diagnosis. It is that of someone who had been working to make that happen.
What makes the situation more striking is Milei’s response. Far from marking differences with whoever was digging the political grave of his until then Chief of Staff, the president chose to retweet Bullrich three times in less than 48 hours. First when he wrote that «trust and ethics are fundamental elements» for the project. Later when he greeted Santilli and said that they had to “put aside distractions,” a surprising phrase to allude to whom the president supported all this time. And finally when he pointed out that the urgent thing was to guarantee re-election. Three retweets that, in the logic of political networks, are equivalent to explicit validation. Within the space, that did not go unnoticed.
She was also clear about the institutional consequences of not acting: she maintained that if the opposition had moved forward with a motion of censure against Adorni in the Senate, the result «would go around the world» and would be negative for the ruling party. That’s why, as he explained, they tried to avoid it. The reading is impeccable as a political analysis. It’s also that of someone who knows exactly how much pressure they applied and when.
Bullrich herself had to come out to clarify that her position «is not a personal issue with Adorni», which in politics usually means exactly the opposite. She also acknowledged that many within the ruling party «spoke quietly» but that she preferred to say it in public. The distinction he drew between those who express their differences openly and those who whisper them is, in itself, a reading of the internal one: there are more disagreements than the ruling party shows, and Bullrich chose to be the one who airs them.
The outcome has a particular geometry. Santilli, the replacement, comes from PRO, the same party of origin as Bullrich. His arrival was celebrated with enthusiasm by the main figures in that space, including Mauricio Macri, who greeted him on social networks. Santilli himself acknowledged that he spoke with Macri the day before his public appointment, although he preferred not to reveal the content of the conversation. That discretion is understandable. Less understandable is to pretend that the arrival of a PRO man to the Chief of Staff says nothing about the state of the relationship between that force and La Libertad Avanza.
Santilli was in charge of emphasizing that the leadership is «clearly and forcefully» Milei’s and that he is working for his re-election in 2027, with a vehemence that sounds like an anticipated response. He also said that one of his objectives will be to make visible the good economic news that, in his opinion, was covered by the noise of recent weeks. The diagnosis is not wrong. The problem is that the noise didn’t come from outside: it came from inside, and Bullrich was part of it.
On Wednesday, Milei will personally join the meeting with deputies and senators from La Libertad Avanza in Casa Rosada, along with Karina Milei, Martín Menem and Bullrich herself, in what the ruling party frames as a gesture of unity to «turn the page.» The problem with turning the page is that it requires that the previous one be closed. And the question of how a government can function when its own senators publicly lobby to remove its chiefs of staff remains unanswered.
