Javier Milei, the 52-year-old Argentine economist who became a star of television debates and social networks for his crazy proposals and his messy hairwas perhaps the only one who, in his country, believed that he would be the most voted candidate in the presidential primaries last Sunday.
(Read here: How feasible is the dollarization of Argentina proposed by Javier Milei)
The average of the main polls gave the candidate from the La Libertad Avanza movement an intention to vote of around 20 percent, while the Kirchner bloc, led by the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, reached 30 percent, and the Together for Change coalition, where Patricia Bullrich —former Security Minister of the government of Mauricio Macri— was a favourite, scored 31 percent.
(See also: The controversial proposals of Javier Milei, the winner of the primaries in Argentina)
On Sunday, late at night, the vote count caused the party to explode at the headquarters of the libertarians (the followers of Milei): 30 percent for their candidate, 28 percent for Together for Change (winner Patricia Bullrich) and 27 percent for a crestfallen Massa, the protégé of former president Cristina Kirchner, the great defeat of the day.
The three candidates, and a handful of candidates with much lower votes, will face each other in just two months, on Sunday, October 22, but it already seems difficult for any one to achieve more than 45 percent to win the Presidency in that first second round (or more than 40 percent and 10 percentage points of advantage over the second), so it is almost certain that on Sunday, November 19, there will be a ballot (second round) between the two most voted.
With last Sunday’s result, Milei gained a momentum that can guarantee her passage to the second round that will, yes, be a reserved forecast. The quirky economist has not won the Presidency, but he went from being an unfeasible candidate to being perfectly viable, not to say a favorite.
How was this ultra-liberal man, a spokesman for the libertarian right who promises to minimize the role of the state, lower taxes and unleash the forces of the market and free enterprise, was able to achieve this result in a country dominated for decades by forces that cover the spectrum from the center to the left?
His triumph was especially broad among young people, since close to 40 percent of voters under 25 years of age voted for him. They do not necessarily subscribe to his economic ideas of the radical right, but they do denounce him against “the political caste” and the corruption of the traditional forces.
Javier Milei takes liberalism to the extreme
his ideas of reducing the size of the State, since he proposes to eliminate more than half of the current ministries
“Young people are against the status quo,” said Milei. And last year, in an interview with Semana, she explained: “The status quo turned to the left, so there is a natural rebellion (whose) start was precisely with the youth.” So that, at least in Argentina, a large swath of young people is today adverse to 21st century socialism.
Milei has harshly questioned Peronism, whose heirKirchnerism, has seen how its leaders, starting with former President Kirchner, look muddied by the scandals of illicit enrichment, bribes and deals.
But he has also said that the centrist forces of Together for Change, which ruled under the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), were unable to cut with these practices.
As the political scientist and consultant Pablo Touzón explained to El País in Madrid, “Milei is a war machine against caste, a brick thrown against a jewelry store window.” And he added: “If he has so many votes, it is not because he is liberal, it is that he interprets the anti-caste spirit, what Podemos did in Spain from the left, here it is done by the right.”
Drugs free, abortion prohibited
Although he himself has said that his reference leaders are Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and acknowledges many affinities with Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Milei is a much more complex and strange character.
He takes his ideas of reducing the size of the State to extreme liberalism, since he proposes to eliminate more than half of the current ministries, as well as numerous social assistance programs that, he assures, are a source of corruption and encourage unproductiveness.
He also wants to eliminate the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA), which he blames for many of the ills of the economy, for its interventionism and its inability to control inflation, which in 2022 was close to 95 percent and is already over 50 percent so far in 2023.
Lower taxes, eliminate withholdings on soybean exports, privatize loss-making public companies, reduce the cost of concessions to private service operators to lower rates, a deregulatory and liberalizing program that not even Reagan dreamed of in the 1980s.
I am against abortion because I am for the right to life
Milei extends her libertarian economic ideas to other fields such as love and illicit drugs. She has declared herself a believer and practitioner of free love —as well as tantric sex—, and maintains that she is “against marriage as an institution.”
Regarding equal marriage (unions of same-sex couples, among others), he assures that he has no problem with that, since he considers that “marriage is a contract” and that everyone should be able to associate as they want and with whoever they want.
“I don’t agree at all that homosexuality is a disease,” he said recently in an interview. For him, it is a “choice of each one”. Milei is also a libertarian on the issue of narcotic and hallucinogenic drugs, since he believes that we should live “in a free society.”
And he explains: “If you want to commit suicide, then taking drugs is committing suicide in installments, I have no problem.” Of course, he warns that the State should not pay for the cost of these drugs or addiction treatment: “If you want to get high, do whatever you want, but don’t ask me to pay the bill.”
Libertarian is also in terms of carrying weapons. After making it clear that he does not carry or keep weapons, he assures that the weapons in the hands of people who want to carry them “remove relative power from the State, which is the one that has the monopoly of violence (…) Why not give guns to individuals?
On the other hand, regarding abortion, he is prohibitionist in all cases, even in that of a pregnancy due to rape: “I am against abortion because I am for the right to life.” He promises a referendum to try to repeal Argentina’s abortion law, which allows it in various circumstances.
The thematic agenda included in the program that Milei formally registered when registering her candidacy for the primaries is as controversial as it is ambitious. If she wins the Presidency, her challenge will be to get her through with a Congress in which she most likely won’t even have a relative majority.
The Chamber of Deputies is dominated by Together for Change (107 seats) and the Kirchnerists of Unión por la Patria (94 seats), and since only 127 seats will be renewed in the October elections, the majorities could not change significantly.
A projection of the newspaper La Nación of Buenos Aires, of what the new Congress of Deputies would look like if on October 22, on the parliamentary ballot, the voters of each region voted in a similar way as they did last Sunday, reveals what limited that would be the rise of libertarians.
Libertad Avanza would go from 3 to 40 deputies, out of a total of 257, and Milei would be forced to agree fairly with some sectors of “the political caste” in order to govern and carry out his reforms.
past and present shadows
Juan Luis González is an Argentine journalist and writer, author of a successful biography about Milei entitled El loco, in which he narrated how the childhood of the current presidential candidate —born in Buenos Aires in a middle-class home— was marked by bullying in school, and because of the physical and psychological violence exercised at home by his parents, with whom he does not interact today. His father beat him almost daily.
“The day that the Malvinas war was announced,” González told CNN Radio, “Milei watched the news with her parents and said that it was going to end badly. Her father was very violent, he savagely beat him and her sister fainted, they have to hospitalize her sister and her mother calls Milei to tell her: ‘Karina is going to die because of you’”.
According to González, Milei has a marked mystical side. She claims to have seen Jesus Christ three times; Thanks to a medium and her sister, she assures that she speaks with her dead dog who was in life as a son; and she recounts that the request that she made to the ‘number One’ (God) to be president of Argentina decided him to launch into politics.
The present also has shadows. Some journalistic investigations suggest that, when forming lists of their party’s candidates for different positions, the applicants had to pay to be included. Among those favored, according to these investigations, there are representatives of the same traditional politics that Milei claims to fight.
But in any case, there is Milei, a candidate who a few weeks ago had little chance of winning the Presidency and who now, after winning the primaries last Sunday, is in first place for the first round to be held in nine weeks. .
With all her strange and mysterious personality, and with the immense uncertainty that a government of hers could bring, Milei settled on the political stage of a country exhausted by successive economic crises and fed up with corruption. His eccentric and highly questionable ideas, and his disturbing life, which in the past would have taken away any chance of victory, have him very close to power today.
MAURICIO VARGAS LINARES
ANALYST
TIME
#crazy #Javier #Milei #surprise #winner #Argentina