Argentina chooses Javier Milei in victory for the far right

Argentinians on Sunday chose Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian who has drawn comparisons to Donald J. Trump, as their next president, a move to the right for a country struggling under an economic crisis and a sign of the enduring strength of the global economy. to the far right.

Mr. Milei, 53, an economist and former television personality, has burst onto Argentina’s traditionally secretive political scene with a brash style, an embrace of conspiracy theories and a series of extreme proposals he says are needed to fix a broken economy and government. to turn heads. .

51-year-old Sergio Massa, Argentina’s centre-left economy minister, conceded defeat before the official results were announced as early campaign figures showed he had been defeated.

As president, Mr. Milei has promised to cut spending and taxes, close Argentina’s central bank and replace the national currency with the U.S. dollar. He has also proposed banning abortion, relaxing gun regulations and only considering countries that want to do so.fight against socialism“as allies of Argentina, mention often the United States and Israel as examples.

Mr. Milei’s election is a victory for the global far-right movement that gained strength with the election of Mr. Trump and similar politicians, such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, but has reeled in recent years from their electoral losses. Mr. Bolsonaro and Spain’s far-right Vox party have cheered Mr. Milei, and his last interview with an English-language newspaper was with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Still, some political analysts said Mr. Milei’s rise reflects many Argentinians’ desperation for change rather than support for his far-right ideology.

Some voters share his extreme views, “but there are others who voted for him because they see in Milei a way to express their frustration in the face of an economic and political reality that has long been ugly to them,” Carlos said. Magni, professor of history and political columnist at La Nación, one of Argentina’s largest newspapers.

“They don’t look at Milei’s ideology,” he added. “They see that Milei is angry and that Milei suggests a break.”

Mr. Milei has embraced comparisons to Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro. Although he has clear differences with the two other politicians, including his strong adherence to a libertarian ideology, Mr. Milei’s political style is similar to them in many ways.

He heavy-handed attacks his critics and the news media, he calls climate change a socialist plot, claims that a shadowy cabal controls the country and has even an unruly hairstyle that has become an online meme.

For many observers, however, the most troubling parallel was Mr. Milei’s preemptive claims of voter fraud.

Mr. Milei has openly questioned the results of the 2020 U.S. elections and the 2022 Brazilian elections, and has spent months claiming with little evidence that Argentina’s elections were rigged against him. He said he had been robbed of hundreds of thousands of ballots in previous elections this year and warned that if he lost on Sunday it could be because the vote had been stolen. Election officials have said there is no evidence of fraud.

Mr. Milei has also downplayed the atrocities of Argentina’s military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, calling them “excesses” as part of a “war” against leftists. He said during a national debate that the number of people killed under the dictatorship was far smaller than widely accepted estimates of as many as 30,000 people.

That rhetoric, combined with his warnings of rigged elections, raised major concerns in Argentina about its potential effect on the country’s democracy. More than twenty prominent Argentinians recorded and released ahead of the vote a video promoting democratic values.

Mr. Milei will now face a major challenge that virtually no other Argentine president has been able to solve for decades: the Argentine economy.

Failed economic policies have long left Argentina one of the most unstable economies in the world, but even by its standards the country is in one of the worst crises.

Annual inflation has risen above 140 percent – ​​the third highest rate in the world – more than two in five Argentines now live in poverty and the value of the Argentine currency has plummeted. In April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, 1 dollar bought 80 pesos, using an unofficial rate based on the market’s assessment of the currency. This week, $1 bought nearly 1,000 pesos.

Mr Milei has argued that the solution is a drastic break with the old policy. His campaign focused on promises to “blow up” the central bank and dollarize the economy, exemplified by smashing miniature versions of the bank and hoisting giant $100 bills with his face on them.

His other campaign tool was a chainsaw that he brandished at rallies. The saw represented the deep cuts he wants to make to the government, including cutting taxes; cutting regulations; privatization of state-owned industries; reducing the number of federal ministries from 18 to eight; shifting public education to a voucher-based system and public health care to an insurance-based system; and cutting federal spending by up to 15 percent of Argentina’s gross domestic product.

Economists and political analysts say Milei lacks the political support and economic conditions to bring about such radical change. His nascent Liberty Advances party has just seven of 72 seats in Argentina’s Senate and 38 of 257 in the House of Representatives.

Mr Milei recently softened some proposals after a backlash.

Yet for many Argentinians, Mr. Milei will be a welcome change from Peronism, the political movement that has held the presidency for sixteen of the past twenty years and during that period has mainly pursued left-wing policies that have brought the country from prosperity to crisis.

After the latest economic downturn and a series of corruption scandals, many voters were desperate for change, despite misgivings about Mr. Milei’s eccentric personality and combative temperament.

“I cannot continue to vote for corruption,” said Silvana Cavalleri, 58, a real estate agent, after saying she had reluctantly voted for Mr. Milei. “I hope that Milei is at least less corrupt. Not that I think he is at all.’

Mr. Milei overcame criticism and questions about a variety of unusual behavior during the campaign, including his harsh attacks on the Pope, his clashes with Taylor Swift fans, his claims to be a tantric sex guru, his dressing up as a libertarian superhero and his close relationship with his Mastiff dogs, which are named after conservative economists – and are all clones too.

Some voters were also turned off by his past outbursts and extreme comments about his years of work as a television pundit and personality.

In a fragment from years earlier widely shared during the campaign, Mr. Milei claims the government is corrupt and robbing average Argentinians, saying: “The state is a pedophile in a kindergarten, with the children chained and bathed in Vaseline.”

Mr. Milei’s running mate, Victoria Villarruel, has also been criticized for her history of comments in defense of the dictatorship. Ms. Villarruel, who comes from an Argentine military family, runs an organization that recognizes victims of attacks carried out by left-wing guerrillas before the military took power. She and Mr. Milei have argued that 8,000 people disappeared during the dictatorship, despite data showing that even the Argentine military believed 22,000 people had disappeared only two years in business.

After voting at a school on Sunday, Ms. Villarruel criticized a nearby mural dedicated to the 30,000 people believed to have died during the dictatorship. “Making graffiti for the 30,000 is like going to a cemetery and painting Barney Bear,” she said, referring to a cartoon character.

Mr. Milei will be sworn in as president on December 10, the 40th anniversary of the inauguration of the first democratically elected president after the fall of the military dictatorship.

Natalie Alcoba And Lucia Cholakian Herrera reporting contributed.