One day after having announced before 20 of the 24 governors of Argentina that he would face a stage of agreements and consensus, Javier Milei this Friday lost the dialogue-oriented face of his administration, the chief of staff, Guillermo Francos.
A veteran of politics, Francos sent a letter of resignation to the president, exhausted due to “the persistent rumors about changes in the National Cabinet“His replacement will be the government spokesman until now, Manuel Adorni.
Another member of the government, the Minister of the Interior, Lisandro Catalán, also presented his resignation to the president.
The news occurred on Friday night, while Milei was having a dinner with former president Mauricio Macri, an ally of the government although with an increasingly critical vision.
The dinner ended much earlier than planned, and Macri left the Olivos presidential residence looking sad and without making any statements.
The relationship between Milei and the former president was strained again for two reasons. On the one hand, Macri announced on Thursday in Chile that his party, the PRO, will present a presidential candidate in 2027. On the other, seven PRO deputies in the Chamber of Deputies left the parliamentary group and joined La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Milei’s party.
Francos’ departure from the cabinet was viewed negatively by the liberal-conservative newspaper “La Nación”: “It is a key loss of someone who had earned the trust of governorsbusinessmen and the diplomatic world. “He was the kind and rational face of a Government that is characterized by excesses.”
Francos, 75, left the government upset by Milei’s announcement that Santiago Caputo, the powerful advisor who bills as a freelancer and has no formal position in the government, will soon have a powerful role in the cabinet.
The until now responsible for the ministers had failed to effectively become the chief of staffsince Milei governs from the duo made up of her sister Karina, general secretary of the presidency, and Caputo. Everything and everyone else is subordinate to them.
Francos left a subtle message in his farewell: “By strange coincidence, my first act as Minister of the Interior and my last as Chief of Staff was to bring together the Governors of the Provinces with the National Executive Branch in order to find mechanisms for dialogue and consensus generationessential to advance the structural reforms that Argentina needs.”
Caputo had already been mentioned as the reason for the departure of another key senior official in Milei’s government, the chancellor until a week ago, Gerardo Werthein.