Javier Milei has lost the first member of his cabinet after 45 days in power. Late Thursday, the Argentine president fired his infrastructure minister, Guillermo Ferraro, a former Peronist who was responsible for coordinating the militants who oversaw vote counting during last November's election victory and ended up in the cabinet in charge of public works. The only official confirmation of the dismissal was a like from President Milei to a tweet from a militant who stated that the Ministry of Infrastructure would be demoted in rank to act as a secretariat for the Minister of Economy. The presidential spokesman, who gives a press conference every day before noon, suspended the conference for this Friday without providing an official version of the dismissal.
According to local media, Ferraro (Buenos Aires, 68 years old) was fired for allegedly leaking information about cabinet meetings to the press. The latest was a threat from the president to provincial governors, published in the newspaper Clarín on Thursday morning. “I will leave them without a cent, I will melt them all down,” the president is said to have said, who has been trying for weeks to convince the opposition to pass his mega-bill to deregulate the state in Congress. Pressure on governors has become essential for the law's passage: with the opposition blocs blurred and no consensus found in his favor, Milei has decided to pressure provincial governments by cutting federal funding if they do not support their congressmen encourage people to vote for the law.
The strategy has convinced governors like that of Tucumán in the northwest of the country, where Peronist Osvaldo Jaldo called on his province's deputies to break with the hegemonic Peronism's alliance, the Unión por la Patria, and form their own bloc in the lower house of the country Congress. At the moment they are the only ones, but the government has been pushing for days. “The adjustment of public accounts includes all items that the national government transfers to the provinces. The zero deficit has not been negotiated. If they do not vote for the law, it is clear to them that the adjustment will be greater for everyone,” said Milei spokesman Manuel Adorni on Tuesday. Economy Minister Luis Caputo later delved into his social networks: “If all the economic measures proposed in the law are not approved, the adjustment will be greater, especially for the provinces,” he wrote on Wednesday in X. Both said – with a little more elegance – the same thing that Milei would have said at the cabinet meeting this Thursday.
Ferraro was one of the super ministers with whom Milei sought to reduce the state portfolio. The Peronist Alberto Fernández held 21 ministries in the previous term, Milei reduced the positions to nine. In the infrastructure sector, a new ministry included public works, energy, transport, mining, telecommunications and housing. An auditor and financial advisor who has worked in the private sector in recent years advising large engineering companies, Ferraro was also undersecretary of Peronist Eduardo Duhalde or advisor to the Finance Ministry of the city of Buenos Aires, governed by liberal Mauricio Macri, during his interim presidency after the 2001 crisis. The mixed profile appeared to benefit the new government, which proposed abolishing public works and moving to a “Chilean” model of public works that involves contracting out work to the private sector. According to local media, the Ministry of Infrastructure will be subordinated to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
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