2023-11-20 01:38:37
The far-right Javier Milei won the presidency of Argentina this Sunday with 55.9% of the votes, against the 44% obtained by his rival, the Peronist Minister of Economy Sergio Massa, according to official partial results. Milei’s disruptive libertarian proposal prevailed with 88% of the tables counted and a participation of 76% of the electoral roll of 35.8 million voters, according to the Argentine National Electoral Directorate.
First modification: 11/20/2023 – 00:38Last modification: 11/20/2023 – 00:41
2 min
Milei, the prophet of dollarization who broke the mold of Argentine politics
Irascible, frank, spontaneous, the ultraliberal economist Javier Milei became known thanks to the vehemence of his economic diatribes and broke the mold of the Argentine political two-party system until reaching the Presidency this Sunday with the promise of dollarization.
With statements against the “parasitic and stupid political caste” [ladrona]”, the libertarian convinced more than half of Argentines to “dynamite” the Central Bank, reduce the size of the State and cut public spending.
Argentina navigates three-digit annual inflation and poverty that affects 40% of its population. It is in the context of these economic sorrows that voters chose his disruptive program over the proposal of his rival, Economy Minister Sergio Massa, a centrist Peronist.
“Milei’s proposals to lift Argentina give us hope of staying because young people, if this continues, have the idea of leaving the country,” Carolina Carabajal, 20, told AFP.
Milei denies that there is a wage gap between men and women, considers abortion a murder and believes that “policies that blame humans for climate change are false.”
It also rejects the consensus of 30,000 disappeared during the last dictatorship (1976-1983) established by human rights organizations, estimating that figure at less than a third.
With proposals like these, which before in Argentina “were marginal and now became central,” he became a leader of “unusual public relevance for the hardest right in Argentina,” Gabriel Vommaro, a political scientist at the University, told AFP. of San Martin.
“Talk like me”
Milei channeled the rage of those who are disappointed in Peronism, the political current that has marked the history of Argentina since the 1940s, created around the figure of the populist military man Juan Domingo Perón.
“People begin to listen to an indignant man who seems alienated, and think ‘finally someone speaks like me’, because he has the frankness to say things,” Belén Amadeo, a political scientist at the University of Buenos Aires, told AFP.
However, his initially very confrontational style did not survive beyond the first electoral round in October, in which he received 30% of the votes.
He had to seek agreements and, for that, put out his inflammatory statements. Thus she obtained the support of her conservative and previous rival, Patricia Bullrich, and the approval of former liberal president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019).
Milei “has come to represent many standing citizens who are tired,” Macri said in a dialogue with the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.
With abundant, tousled hair for which he is nicknamed “the Wig,” the 53-year-old president-elect is also frequently called “crazy.”
To these nicknames, he responded during the campaign: “Do you know the difference between a genius and a madman? Success.”
With AFP (information still in progress)
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