Former President Mauricio Macri gave his first public speech of the Milei era on Thursday evening. He expressed support for the libertarian leader’s vision, but criticized him sharply for failing to build a solid team to carry it out.

“The current economic ideas are the same ones that PRO has been promoting for a long time,” Macri said. He was speaking at an event in La Boca to relaunch Propuesta Republicana (PRO), the conservative political party he founded and leads. His party is aligned with Milei’s agenda on demands including balancing the budget, reforming the pension system, and privatizing public companies.

In May, Macri took over the PRO’s presidency after current Security Minister Patricia Bullrich stepped down from the role. “We’re back,” the official PRO X account posted at the time. Macri’s speech and the PRO’s relaunch comes at a time when the relationship between its current and former leaders is strained: the security minister is part of Milei’s government and Macri is scrambling to keep the PRO a separate entity. As early as April, a high-ranking PRO leader from Bullrich’s faction told the Herald that the party was “on the brink of extinction” as LLA overtook its agenda and voters.

In his speech, Macri urged Argentines to support the president’s “crusade” for change and added that the PRO has supported Javier Milei from the beginning. He noted that PRO had supported Milei’s La Libertad Avanza coalition by providing polling station witnesses in the second round of the presidential elections. After the change of government, PRO lawmakers backed Milei’s flagship Ley Bases. “The PRO has done everything in our power to provide the government with the extraordinary tools it needs to undertake the liberation of politics,” he said.

However, he said that while Milei has proposed “merging” PRO into La Libertad Avanza, he has rejected the proposal. “I said to him that in the 21st century, nobody gets married without first knowing each other and living together,” he said. “Well, I was more direct.”

You may also be interested in: Argentina’s PRO party on the brink as infighting peaks

Bullrich and former BA city mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, did not participate in the event. Bullrich has pushed for the two parties to formally merge. Meanwhile, Rodríguez Larreta has said that the PRO should not ally with LLA at all.

“President Milei is very clear about what needs to be done. He has ideas, he has conviction and he has courage. But he still has the challenge of building a team,” Macri said, adding that PRO had offered to participate in the government to support the administration. Macri also claimed that some areas of Milei’s government were still under the control of former Peronist Economy Minister, Sergio Massa.

“It is a challenge to help those who are not willing to be helped,” Macri said, referencing Milei. “When we could help him, it was despite his inner circle.”

Earlier, presidential advisor Santiago Caputo praised the former president. “I have an excellent opinion of President Macri,” he said in an interview with website TN, adding that he admired the PRO. Previous reports indicated that Caputo and Presidency Secretary Karina Milei were at odds with Macri.

“We are enormously grateful for his unconditional support for the change that President Milei is carrying out,” Caputo added.