The libertarian congresswoman criticized the vice president for her performance in recent months. She said that she abandoned her electorate.
In one of the most heated moments of the internal libertarian struggle since Javier Milei assumed the presidency, deputy Lilia Lemoine referred to the conflicts within the government and pointed to Victoria Villarruel, whom she accused of not fulfilling her duties correctly because she had “the vice president’s curse.”
It was in an interview with CNN Radio where the legislator – who in recent days participated in the tense discussion developed within her block of the Lower House – admitted that there are problems between the leaders of La Libertad Avanza, but stressed that these conflicts are not hidden from the public because they are “a transparent management.” In this sense, she said that they are not going to “pretend that everything is fine and smile.”
However, when asked if she was concerned about a certain institutional decline in ties within the libertarians themselves, Lemoine responded affirmatively and mentioned Victoria Villarruel as one of those responsible for this happening.
“If the vice president is not fulfilling her roles as she should or is doing things that show that she is under the vice curse, they must be said, because she is carrying out a proselytizing political campaign and is also saying outrageous things. She is not defending the people who accompanied her, supported her and defended her against all odds, expecting something from her. She abandoned them,” the deputy lashed out.
Lilia Lemoine
Lemoine also said that, to cover up this situation, Villarruel held an event in which he expressed a series of generalizations that “scared” her. “He held an event saying ‘we are going to put all the Montoneros in jail’. And I say, who? Because it is the executive branch, not the judiciary. And second, why does the vice president have to persecute people in a democracy? And third, he is also going to put the Minister of Security in jail because she is working well,” she questioned.
Along the same lines, he said that the president of the Senate has her own agenda and acts as if she were a separate government. “But Villarruel cannot be a government within the Government because her functions do not allow it. That is why I say that Argentines should not worry because it is not an institutional problem. If she were to resign from her position in the Senate and leave like Chacho Álvarez, then we would have a problem,” he concluded.
Lilia Lemoine’s statements about the vice president come in a context where the government is suffering a new outbreak of internal distrust: the “iron triangle”, made up of the president, Javier Milei, his sister and general secretary, Karina Milei, and the advisor Santiago Caputo, are convinced that there are officials who leak confidential information to the press or transmit it to other parties.
Although it is not yet known who it is, the government leadership suspects a person who leaks information. At Balcarce 50 they hint that they have not yet detected the “mole”, as they themselves called him, but they assure that “they are working on it”.
Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel have been estranged for several weeks
The tense moment within the administration became evident last Tuesday, when the Executive announced at the last minute that it would suspend the Cabinet meeting that takes place on that day, every week, practically without fail, which generated suspicions, mainly, among its own. The Casa Rosada tried to conceal it, and the ministries played along. Thus, both in the seat of central power and in the different departments they responded to the questions about the reasons for the decision to suspend it with the argument that the -always convenient- “agenda items” had been interposed.
Specifically, they were referring to the face-to-face conversation that Milei had with the United States ambassador, Marc Stanley. But they did not mention that that morning there was also a “reduced” Cabinet meeting, or, as it was called in the Government, “blue”. They say that they perceived certain disobedience, and decided to make a strong cut in the usual meeting.
The meeting was extremely closed, to the point that the collaborators of the present leaders never knew in which room of the Casa Rosada it was held. According to what Infobae was able to reconstruct, it took place in the morning and lasted about two hours. In addition to the President, there were members of his inner circle, Karina and S. Caputo; the Chief of Cabinet, Guillermo Francos; the spokesman Adorni, especially close to the sister of the president; the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, the main representative of the merger with -part- of PRO, which won and maintains the confidence of the President; the head of the Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem.
