IT IS BETTER TO CRY FOR YOU, ARGENTINA​

Javier Milei’s victory is not surprising given the support he had from two of the three parties in which the electorate was divided in the first round, although he could achieve a final vote higher than the minimum difference and within the margin of error pointed out by the last polls.

Thus, we have the triumph of someone who appeared on television with a chainsaw to “exterminate the political caste”. A populist right-wing radical, an anarcho-capitalist as Milei himself defines himself, someone who claims to admire Margaret Thatcher (the head of the British government at the time of the war between both countries that allowed the British to recover the Malvinas), who insulted the Argentine Pope, who even had very dishonorable words about Diego Armando Maradona and yet, something incredible and never seen before in Argentina, is elected president of the republic.

As Pola Oloixarac pointed out in her book “Galería de famosos argentinos”, “to be (or not) of the caste has become an alarming condition, since everyone can be accused of being one”. Milei defines himself in negative: the outsider, the one untouched by discredit and disaster, the one who is not part of any political family”.

But he incorporates his family into the government. Karina, his sister, is his political boss. As for family, he also leads a chaste life with his five dogs, whom he calls his “four-legged children.” He is the man who boasts that he hardly ever ejaculates. Proof that he has total control over his body, as he declared to a television program without anyone asking him.

Total control? What we can confirm is that he often loses control of himself when someone disagrees with him.

Elected with an agenda that advocates little state in the economy, he proposes cutting public spending by 15%, the end of the local currency, the Argentine peso, the elimination of the Central Bank and the dollarization of the economy, in addition to things like legalizing human organs and considering climate change “an invention of the left”.

In addition to the deep weariness of a significant part of the Argentine electorate with Peronist Kirchnerism, the so-called libertarian candidate benefited from the fundamental support of the conservative Patricia Bullrich, candidate of the center-right coalition Juntos por el Cambio, who came third in the first round with 24% of the vote, as well as the liberal former president Mauricio Macri (who led the country between 2015 and 2019), who publicly gave him his support immediately after Massa’s lead in the first round. A victory with 55% or 56% of the vote is precisely the sum of the votes that Milei (over 30%) and Patrícia Bulrich (over 24%) achieved when they went to the polls on October 23.

The main trump card of the former doorman and rock singer, a “precarious and superficial thinker” according to Oloixarac, was the state of weariness of Argentines with the economic situation. With inflation at 143% year-on-year and poverty affecting 40% of the population, Argentina is facing the worst economic situation in the last two decades. It has a credit agreement since 2018 with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for $44 billion, negotiated by then President Macri.

Milei is not a classic right-wing leader, as he does not share their values and habits, but someone who thrives on chaos. A man who, according to Oloixarac, “in the absence of medical attention, has found media attention”.

When asked on television last week about his plan to dollarize Argentina and whether the project was still on the table, he said, “Of course I am going to implement it,” clearing doubts about what has become one of his campaign banners. “The adjustment is going to happen anyway,” he warned. And he continued, “We are proposing an adjustment to prevent it from ending in hyperinflation. But we are going to make the politicians and their friends pay for it, not the people”.

What will he be able to do? Very little, he will not have enough support in parliament, Libertad Avanza has a tiny representation, it does not even reach 14 percent of the national deputies, he will not have the capacity to make reforms and possibly not even to last. “Impeachment is going to knock at the door, he does not have the capacity to do what he promises”, as the Argentine political scientist and ICS professor at the University of Lisbon Andrés Malamud said in TSF.

One might think that the electoral defeats of Bolsonaro and Trump would curb the emergence of other far-right populist leaders, but the truth is that they continue to appear and triumph, especially in periods of economic crisis in countries.

Will he moderate them and contain them in power? That is what was said about Trump and Bolsonaro. Then… that is what we saw.

Ricardo Alexander, a Portuguese journalist, is deputy director of TSF Radio Noticias and an associate of EditoRed.

This article was originally published in TSF Radio Noticias, Portugal. You can read the original text in Portuguese here.