Ultraconservative, far-right libertarian, right-wing populist, ultraliberal outsider, eccentric radical in the bold style of Trump and Bolsonaro - this is a set of unfriendly labels with which the world's media are trying to describe 53-year-old Javier Milei, the winner of Sunday's presidential elections in Argentina. Since Donald Trump's victory, probably no politician has evoked such emotions.

Because who these days wears such sideburns and some kind of mop hairstyle that even a former American president would be ashamed of? In addition, this eccentric president-elect is an enemy of communism and socialism and, for his fellow citizens, a suppressor of the Leftist Peronism and Kirchnerism manner governments, which they could not part with for so long.

The victory of Milei also has considerable geopolitical significance, as it may thwart the EU's attempts to conclude an agreement with Mercosur (the most robust free trade zone in South America), not to mention the Chinese-Russian plans to vassalize Latin America using an excuse of expanding the BRICS group to include Argentina. So, who is this politician who has been causing such uproar in the world?

Internet star

In short, he's a character. In his youth, he tried to become a footballer and played in the rock band Chacarita Juniors. Still, as a 20-year-old, he became interested in the economics of the classical liberals Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, and he remains so to this day. In honour of his favourite economists, he even named his mastiff dogs, which - according to Argentinean media - were cloned from his beloved pet Conan, although Milei never confirmed this information.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE Milei is an opponent of abortion (which was legally introduced in Argentina in 2020). Yet, he does not hesitate to call his compatriot, Pope Francis, an "imbecile" and "evil", accusing him of promoting communism. He can also tarnish another Argentinian idol, Diego Maradona, by claiming that Pele was a better footballer than him.

Even though feminists hate him, he surrounds himself with women. His partner is an extremely attractive comedian actress. Still, a week before the second round, his staff had to officially deny that Milei was having sex with his younger sister Karina, who - by the way - was the architect of his election campaign.

Milei got into politics from the Internet platform, where he gained enormous popularity among young Argentines during the pandemic. Among other things, he was criticising the anti-Covid restrictions. He also gained popularity thanks to television, where not only his libertarian views but also his hairstyle became a sensation. His unique hairstyle is a mixture of the movie Wolverine - as his stylist Lilia Lemoine wants, and only she can cut his sideburns - and the ageing Elvis Presley. Argentinean media gossip that Milei's hairstyle is a slight bow to sentiment for the longest-serving President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, who served his office at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and dealt well with the hyperinflation. Milei has also quite a challenge ahead of him.

After many years of Leftist rule, which brought Argentina to the brink of an economic abyss, with year-by-year inflation reaching even 142.7 percent in October and the share of the poor reaching 45 percent, things are so bad in the country that - after years of worshipping politicians promising to build a socialist welfare state - Argentines elected a libertarian who preaches individual freedom and the sanctity of private property. For now, he can count on the record level of public support. Milei received 14.5 million votes (55.69%) in the second round, 3 million more than his competitor, Peronist and Minister of Economy Sergio Massa, thus obtaining - with a great turnout of 76% - the best result since 1983, the year when the military dictatorship in Argentina has ended.

Therefore, anarcho-capitalist Milei bluntly announces shock therapy: mass privatisation, drastic cuts in public spending, liquidation of 12 ministry departments, and replacing the now worthless Argentinean peso with the dollar currency. – We are the largest slums in the world. We've been saying this for years. Argentina has a future ahead, but only if it is liberal, says the winner.

Supporters of the free market claim that his clear victory is a historic moment, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall (Milei has a photo of the demolition of the wall on his profile on the X website), because - as the British conservative magazine "The Spectator" writes - Milei will be the first libertarian President in the world.

And he better keep his promises because many of his voters said on the election night that he was their last hope.

Messiah

As the Spanish daily "El Mundo" wrote right after the elections, Milei is a punishment for the Argentinean establishment, let us add, meted out by many young people. According to data from the Argentine National Electoral Commission, in the second round, there were up to 47% more teenagers - aged 16 and 17 - than in the 2019 national elections, and most of them voted Milei. To clarify, compulsory voting in Argentina applies to citizens aged 18 to 70. People aged 16 to 18 also have the right to vote, but in their case, voting is optional.

Some politicians noticed this trend earlier. Former centre-right president Mauricio Macri, who supported Milei, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) shortly before Sunday's vote that following the young people - who say they want the change - is necessary. The candidate himself also understood this very well because, in the interview with the conservative American publicist and presenter Tucker Carlson, he said that after many years of socialist rule, a liberal rebellion had to appear, and rebellion always arises among the young people. – They were the ones who noticed that someone was talking about freedom, liberalism and questioning the status quo – Milei concluded.

That is why the strategy of searching for voters online, similar to that used by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the USA, turned out to be so effective. According to "El Mundo", after the last presidential debate, the most important newspapers in Argentina, such as "Clarín" and "La Nación", announced Sergio Massa as the winner. At the same time, on social media, Milei proved to be the winner.

The announcement of Milei's electoral victory can also be found in a document of the daily "La Nación" from August this year titled "What Milei's voters think".

The film features mainly young people from Argentina: an IT specialist, a porter, a bartender, a shipbuilding student, and a choreography student, but it also features pensioners and a middle-aged junior high school teacher. Everyone is tired of poverty, lack of prospects and the same group of politicians trying to get their votes. The young say that they have to live with their parents because their salary is only enough for 2-3 weeks, and the older ones say that they sometimes sleep on the street due to the lack of money. The state is an oppressor for them, depriving their families of their dreams. They talk about politicians in the Milei language, that they are a caste that is responsible for all the evil in Argentina, for the fact that nothing works and that hinders the economic and social development of their country. The phrase is repeated many times in the film: "It's still the same people; it's time for a change".

The documentary's protagonists are not afraid of the dollarisation of the economy announced by Milei. The teacher says everyone keeps dollars at home, and the pensioner hopes that introducing the dollar will improve his financial situation. In turn, young people want access to weapons to have a chance against criminals.

Milei's voters are also not convinced by feminists' criticism of the politician. They point out that Milei surrounds himself with women who are to play a key role in his administration. They divide feminism into different categories: the one that was good for women - that started at the beginning of the 20th century and won them the right to vote and work wherever they wanted - and the contemporary, wrongly radicalised against men. The most powerful words in the film are those of the high school teacher: "They say Milei is crazy. What if we need a madman? For me, he is the new Messiah who will save this country."

Make Argentina Great Again

At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina - earning a fortune from beef exports - was one of the ten richest countries in the world, ahead of France and Italy, among other countries. At that time, Argentina's GDP was growing at a rate of 6% annually, and European emigrants looking for a better life went not only to New York City but also to Buenos Aires. During the election campaign, Milei often returned to this glorious story. Not only him. Donald Trump, who congratulated him on Truthsocial, wrote that Milei has a chance to make Argentina great again, as it was 100 years ago. Is this just wishful thinking, and will Argentinean voters be as disappointed as they were under the rule of the Center-Right Mauricio Macri?

We know the details of Milei's plan from his election campaign. The models for the economic reforms Milei promises are Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. In an interview for the weekly "Economist", he announced, among other things, reducing public spending from the current 38% up to 15% of GDP. He wanted to achieve this by abolishing some ministry departments, including the sectors of health, transport, education, culture, and the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity. A government without ministers of education and health? According to Milei, services normally provided by the state, such as education and health care, would be subjected to competition on the free market. In education, he would introduce a system of education vouchers so that parents would transfer funds to selected schools, which is reminiscent of some ideas that also appeared in Polish politics long in the past.

Milei's administration would have only eight ministry departments: economy, justice, internal affairs, human resources, security, defence, foreign affairs and infrastructure.

During his campaign, he also announced the privatisation of 34 Argentinean state-owned companies, including the oil giant YPF, as well as public media (Televisión Publica, Radio Nacional and the Télam news agency) and the reduction or abolition of most Argentine taxes. Milei also talked about limiting federal transfers to 24 Argentinean provinces. His plans also included the abolition of privileged pensions of judges, diplomats and presidents of the Supreme Court. He also intends to resign from his presidential pension.

However, his most famous proposal is the dollarisation of the Argentinean economy, thanks to which he believes that the fight against inflation will be successful.

Already in the first interview after Sunday's victory, on the Todo Noticias news channel, the new President maintained his election promises: from public spending cuts - through negotiations with the IMF - to eliminating the budget deficit by the end of 2024. He also repeated that everything that can be privatised will be privatised because whatever belongs to the public sector does not work well.

According to the periodical "El Economista", the operation of replacing the devalued Argentinean peso with the dollar will be carried out by Milei according to the plan of Emilio Ocampo, an economist with an MBA from the University of Chicago, who will also take over the position of the head of the Central Bank (which is ultimately to be closed), in order to prepare grounds for this entirely complicated process. Ocampo promises that if dollarisation is carried out in January- February 2024, approximately in April 2025, inflation will reach a level consistent with that in the USA. Milei is more careful. In an interview with Todo Noticias, he warned that inflation would remain high for about two years "because in monetary policy, what is done today brings results within 18-24 months". As if he was saying, don't expect miracles right away. Moreover, according to Reuters, inflation in Argentina will reach 185 percent by the end of this year. So, how long will Argentineans be patient? And can this experiment even work?

Milei, the leader of the La Libertad Avanza party operating since 2021 (conservative in ideological matters and libertarian in economic terms), will not be able to count on the support of Congress. In the Chamber of Deputies, which has 257 members, LLA has 37 members. Of the 72 senators, only seven belong to the LLA. His coalition with the Mauricio Macri formation will not have the required majority either.

Nevertheless, Milei promises that he will not introduce changes through presidential decrees. On December 11, he will send a package of laws to Congress enabling the reforms he has announced to begin. Only if there is no consent for it will he decide to go for referendums.

However, conservative publicists, e.g., on the Spanish website Libertad Digital, advised him to consider ruling by decree because the resistance of Peronists, who have enormous influence in the parliament, might be challenging to overcome.

El Loco

The Left is already sounding the alarm and, in its friendly media, recalls all the politically incorrect views of the Argentinean: that the theory of man-made climate change he calls a socialist lie, that he is against abortion and does not support same-sex marriage. His allegedly disturbed personality is also censored, as evidenced by the media's repeated nickname "El Loco" (English: crazy), apparently given to Milei by his school friends. Contesting politicians are already threatening people with his explosive nature.

A few months ago, after the libertarian won the primaries, Luis Delia -one of the left-wing Argentinean activists – entered a post on the X platform, suggesting that Milei's story resembles the one of Hitler coming to power - a madman, elected in a country harassed by hyperinflation. To sicken the Argentineans with the new President, the Left even uses arguments from the religious sphere, which they usually criticise or present in a ridiculous form. Today, the same left-wing accuses Milei of his aversion towards Pope Francis. Evo Morales, the former left-wing leader of Bolivia, commenting on Milei's victory, wrote on the X social media that the Left will never wish success to anyone spreading fascism and neoliberalism, which "offends the Brother Pope of the poor".

Milei is not only a problem of the Latin Left, gathered in Pan-American lobbying groups - Foro de São Paulo and Grupo de Puebla - whose dream, as the daily newspaper El Mundo wrote, is a red Latin America. The new President's election may also thwart the plans of China and Russia, which are trying to create a bloc of countries competing with the USA-led West.

During the campaign, Milei and his colleagues made no secret that they might reject the invitation for Argentina to join BRICS, which the last outgoing leftist President Alberto Fernandez agreed to in Johannesburg. It is no secret that, together with Argentina, Iran would also join BRICS in January 2024, i.e. the regime supplying Russia with drones for the invasion of Ukraine, which Milei condemned. BRICS would thus become the anti-Western alliance led by Beijing and Moscow.

Meanwhile, in a conversation with Tucker Carlson, Milei emphasised that "there will be no business with China, with any communists". However, he added that this does not mean that Argentina cannot sell its goods to China, Russia or Brazil - the country ruled now by the far-left President Lula da Silva. Diana Mondino, another woman in Milei's entourage, who is to become the Minister of Foreign Affairs in his cabinet, after the elections also expressed her scepticism about joining BRICS - by the way – she was quoted by Russian Sputnik.

China has already responded to such signals. As the Xinhua agency reported, Argentina breaking off relations with China would be a "serious mistake", according to Chinese Foreign Ministry diplomat and spokeswoman Mao Ning. Supporters of cooperation with China take comfort in the fact that Milei's collaboration with the centre-right Macri will force a relaxation of any anti-Chinese course, as – amongst other sources – was reported by the "South China Morning Post". After all, China is Argentina's second-largest trading partner after Brazil. An expert on Latin America from the British think tank RUSI, cited by PAP Dr Carlos Solar, noticed that the poor state of the economy would force the new President of Argentina to be more pragmatic in the field of international relations since Brazil and China are of key importance to the Argentinean economy.

Perhaps this is why the EU's trade agreement with Mercosur, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, will also be concluded. The agreement creating a gigantic free trade zone was agreed after 20 years of negotiations in 2019 but has not yet been ratified, mainly due to French resistance. As recently reported by export.org.uk, EU officials and Brazilian diplomats are in a hurry and do not exclude the possibility of finalising the agreement even before December 10, the date of Milei's assumption of his Presidential Office.

However, according to the "Buenos Aires Times", changes in foreign policy will certainly occur, as announced by Milei's upcoming plans and his first meeting with the media, which the president-elect held in a setting reminiscent of White House press conferences.

The media points out that in August, Milei clearly defined who Argentina's allies would be: the United States and Israel. –This is our international policy. We will not ally with the communists, Milei announced. Even before he is sworn in as the President, he is going on a private trip to the USA and Israel.

– Anna Gwozdowska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– Translated by Katarzyna Chocian