By Bernardo Z Rech Argentina has recently elected a new president: Javier Milei. As the country has been undergoing a deep economic crisis caused by the Central Bank’s mismanagement, Milei came in as an outsider to take his country by the horns to put it back on an upward trajectory. However, Milei’s reason for winning seems to be part of a right-wing libertarian trend we have seen in many other countries such as Brazil, the US, and the UK, all of which have elected outsider candidates in an attempt to induce libertarian reforms to fix their deeply troubled economic systems. Argentina is no different. The country now has the fourth highest inflation rate in the world, and Milei portrays himself as the superhero (quite literally) ready to do away with all corruption and “leftist economic policy.” But who is Javier Milei, and what has made him so attractive to the Argentinian population? A bit of context is necessary to understand the current Argentine political climate. Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, husband and wife who served as successive presidents between 2003-2015, were a part of the 2000s Latin American trend of electing left-wing, populist politicians. Their economic policy was largely based on targeting GDP growth at any cost. By the early 2010s, the economy showed signs of overheating, leading to the country declaring fiscal austerity. With the masses losing faith in the country’s economic capabilities, many turned to another solution, one that would drastically alter the trajectory of the country. Mauricio Macri was elected president in 2015, who immediately lifted foreign exchange restrictions, leading to a large devaluation of the Argentine currency, the peso. This trend would continue throughout his presidency, which was marked by a shift from left-wing Kirchnerian policy towards liberal monetarism. Macri would be unsuccessful in curtailing the economic crisis, which was only made worse by the next president, Alberto Fernández. Fernández came in as a return to Kirchnerianism, having Cristina Kirchner as his vice president, but his all-out attempt at increasing economic growth failed due to the COVID-19 crisis. This was the moment in which Javier Milei came into the picture. Milei rose in popularity during the late Macri and early Fernández administrations. His antics got him famous on the internet, especially on Twitter. Milei uses riled-up, inflammatory speech full of swear words and slang, often calling politicians “thieves” who “want to sell the country to communist China.” During his campaign, he would smash a piñata representing the Central Bank, which he blamed for Argentina’s economic troubles. Milei’s quirkiness did not stop there. He claimed that he regularly received counsel from his dead dog, Conan the Barbarian, whom he would later clone and name the puppies after famous libertarian economists. Wielding a chainsaw, he would frequently show up to his political rallies to slash away the size and power of the state. He would often wear a superhero suit, which he named “General Ancap,” in reference to Anarcho-Capitalism, his preferred political ideology. His main proposal, if elected president, would be to diminish the size of the state by chipping away ministries which he thought of as useless. These ministries included the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, the Ministry of Public Works, and the Ministry of Social Development. Finally, he is committed to the idea of closing the Central Bank and of adopting the US Dollar as the official Argentine currency. Milei’s attractiveness to the Argentinian public comes from the way his politics approaches populism. Argentina has seen its fair share of populist politicians in recent history, most famously during the long reign of Juan Perón and the Peronism he inspired. Despite being greatly opposed to Peronism, labelling it as the cause for Argentina’s recent misfortunes, Milei is a new installment in the same populist trend. Directing his speeches toward the masses and rallying them against the establishment, Milei is capable of getting to the hearts and souls of most Argentinians. Being outspoken and expressing himself like “one of the people,” Milei portrays himself as the “out of the establishment” character and a champion of the people. Much like other right-wing populist politicians such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Geert Wilders, and Boris Johnson, he makes use of his personal features, such as his eccentric hair, to stand out from the crowd.
In the 2023 Presidential Election, Milei faced the leader of the incumbent party, Sergio Massa. Massa had maintained a close alliance with Cristina Kirchner, whom Milei blamed for the chaos in which Argentina found itself. Thus, with Peronist tendencies on one side and a new form of populism on the other, Milei found in the run-up an easy victory, winning by what many analysts considered an electoral landslide. The fact that Massa was the Minister of the Economy during Cristina Kirchner’s administration did little to help his case, as most of the problems found in Argentina were economic by nature. As such, many blamed Massa for putting Argentina on track for economic disarray. Milei’s electoral victory came as a natural reaction to Massa’s misfortunes and as a form of protest vote. Milei’s election came as a huge shock to many analysts within Argentina and worldwide. A quirky radical leading one of the largest economies in the southern hemisphere may cause Argentina’s worries to grow even worse, alongside its deeply distrustful population. How he intends to play out his term of office, however, remains to be seen. a
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May 2024
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