With a vote obviously supported by a pragmatic alliance with the center-right, the ultra-libertarian candidate of La Libertad Avanza, Javier Milei swept the presidential elections in Argentina on Sunday. Taking almost 56% of the votes, Milei managed to beat his rival Sergio Massa, current Minister of Economy, by a wide margin of almost twelve points. Massa - who after a surprising victory in the first round only reached 44% of the votes in this one - conceded defeat almost immediately.
Everything indicates that the agreement with former conservative president Mauricio Macri and the center-right candidate Patricia Bullrich, defeated in the first round, has been critical for the victory of Milei who will take office on December 10. The already elected president praised the two center-right leaders in his victory speech given at ten at night (two in the morning in Spain) in the center of Buenos Aires, before several thousand young followers who chanted the now famous slogan. of Milei's sui generis liberalism: "Freedom, damn it!"
"Milei has moderated in recent days, - although not to much, - due to his campaign needs and to win votes," Rosendo Fraga, the director of the Nueva Mayoría Studies Center, said in an interview with La Vanguardia. "There are those who consider Milei to be the lesser evil."
The support of a group of international leaders of center-right parties - including former Spanish Prime Minister of the Popular Party Mariano Rajoy - was also important in combating the feeling that the libertarian, with his violent rhetoric, was too extreme.
But it remains to be seen whether more moderate conservatives can stop the most radical plans of Milei's libertarian movement, including his controversial plan to dollarize the economy and close the central bank. Milei's wide margin of victory could mean a showdown.
The overwhelming victory of the so-called chainsaw candidate, who has committed to making draconian cuts to the Argentine State, laying off hundreds of thousands of public employees and privatizing thirty public companies, is a political earthquake in a region in which the political cycle seemed favorable to the progressive party. It is further proof that the political pendulum in times of extreme polarization and rising far-right populism is extremely volatile.
There will be geopolitical repercussions. Milei opposes the Mercosur regional trade agreement and has proposed breaking diplomatic relations with China and Brazil, Argentina's two most important trading partners, which Milei considers communist. "He will be a geopolitical ally for the United States, and even more so if Trump wins next year," said a former minister in the government of Alberto Fernández y Massa.
Milei, who appeared on stage in Buenos Aires alongside her sister and advisor Karina, celebrated the victory with a speech surrounded by thousands of young people seduced by the eccentricities of the far-right candidate whose rise to the presidency in less than two years of activity politics has been meteoric. "Today the end of Argentine decline begins, we begin to turn the page," she said. "The model of the state as loot is over (...), the idea that the perpetrators are the victims is over."
He announced "a government that will defend private property and free trade" and "the end of caste." But he thanked Macri and Bullrich, politicians who cannot but be considered part of the old establishment that he describes as caste.
The libertarian economist has managed in an unprecedented way to put together an image of a punk rocker with a black leather jacket and sideburns, practicing tantra sex, with nods to the most conservative sectors of Argentine power, including soldiers convicted of crimes against humanity who admire his denialism regarding the number of victims of the extermination of the military junta in the seventies.
The newly elected vice president Victoria Villarruel has defended soldiers convicted for their involvement in the torture of opponents during the dictatorship. Milei and Villarruel defend the prohibition of abortion and the restriction of minority rights.
Villarroel is a close ally of Spanish far-right party Vox and Milei met with Santiago Abascal, the leader and founder of Vox in Buenos Aires last month.
The controversial plan to dollarize the economy has excited millions of voters fed up with accelerated inflation that exceeds 140%. Milei usually goes to her rallies with a chainsaw to symbolize her desire to tear up the state and the culture of social justice, and a piece of cardboard in the shape of a huge dollar bill.
But the reality behind the rhetoric will be a tough test for a politician with no experience of power and a volatile temperament. Milei got at least one thing right yesterday in her speech when she highlighted that Argentina "is going through the worst crisis in its history." Everyone agrees that the already serious economic problems will deepen and drag the country into another solvency crisis and another necessary rescue from the IMF.
Most economists, even those who support his plan for cuts to the state, believe that the dollarization plan would lead to disaster. Macri is also opposed and wants to impose on his own team. But if Milei abandons a cornerstone of his program, the libertarian punk's credibility will be shattered before the play begins.
