The chainsaw-swinging Trump admirer who is Argentina’s new president

Buenos Aires: What many deemed impossible just months ago is reality: right-wing populist Javier Milei resoundingly won Argentina’s presidency.

And with his victory, the fiery freshman politician has thrust the country into the unknown regarding just how extreme his policies will be, following a campaign in which he revved a chainsaw to symbolically cut the state down to size.

Javier Milei raises his fist after voting.Credit: AP

With almost all votes tallied, Milei handily beat Economy Minister Sergio Massa, 55.7 per cent to 44.3 per cent. Massa had conceded even before the electoral authority began announcing preliminary results.

Milei, 53, a self-described anarcho-capitalist with a dishevelled mop of hair, made his name by furiously denouncing the “political caste” on television. His pledge for abrupt, severe change resonated with Argentines weary of annual inflation soaring above 140 per cent and a poverty rate that reached 40 per cent. He will take power on December 10.

Once in office, he has said he will slash government spending, make the US dollar the country’s official currency and eliminate the Central Bank as well as key ministries, including those of health and education.

An admirer of former US president Donald Trump, he has likewise presented himself as a crusader against the sinister creep of global socialism with plans to purge the government of corrupt establishment politicians. In the weeks before the runoff, though, he walked back some of his more unpopular proposals, such as loosening gun controls and sweeping, indiscriminate privatisation.

Javier Milei frequently brought a chainsaw to campaign rallies.Credit: Getty

“Hang on to your hat,” Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Washington-based Wilson Centre, said. “Milei has toned down his anti-establishment rage lately and downplayed his more outlandish proposals, but it’s going to be a wild ride, given his combative style, inexperience and the few allies he has in Congress.”

Supporters celebrated the election win outside Milei’s headquarters in Buenos Aires, drinking beer and chanting as fireworks went off overhead. They waved both Argentine flags and another yellow flag emblazoned with the words “Don’t Tread On Me,” which Milei’s movement has adopted as its own.

“We no longer want the past; we are betting on the future,” said Ezequiel Fanelli, 45, who works for an insurance company and had a yellow flag in hand.

“We believe it’s a change. Clearly, it’s not easy; it’s doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a collective construction, not just his alone,” Fanelli added.

A supporter of Javier Milei holds a fake chainsaw during a campaign rally.Credit: AP

By wresting power from Massa’s Peronist party which has dominated Argentine politics for decades, Milei’s victory represents a political paradigm shift in the country. He is the first outsider to reach the presidency and considerably farther right-wing than anyone who has held the position before.

“I have a lot of faith in the policies that he can push forward, and I hope he can fulfil everything he proposed without obstacles in the middle,” said Ayalen Abalos, a 22-year-old tourism student.

Implementing his agenda will be one of the main challenges, analysts say.

“Milei and his hardcore supporters will see his decisive victory as a mandate for radical change and an endorsement of his conservatism. That would be a mistake,” Gedan said. “Many Argentines voted for him reluctantly, unwilling to support the economy minister of a collapsed economy.”

And while the broad margin of victory reflects support from the people, he will need political allies, as well, said Mariel Fornoni of the political consulting firm Management & Fit. His fledgling Liberty Advances party, for example, has zero governors.

“Without political support, he won’t be able to do what he said he was going to do,” said Fornoni. Complicating his challenge further, “he has had little prior leadership experience — he has never led a legislative chamber, a province, or a company.”

But the way in which voters proved willing to hand the country’s reins to someone untested shows the deep discontent Argentines have for the ruling class and the status quo.

Milei’s win marks the culmination of an improbable rise to power. He parlayed his television stardom into a seat in Argentina’s lower house of Congress two years ago. Just months ago, his presidential bid was viewed as a mere sideshow, until he scored the most votes in the August primary elections and sent shockwaves through the political landscape.

Supporters of presidential candidate Javier Milei celebrate outside his campaign headquarter his victory over Economy Minister Sergio Massa.Credit: AP

Milei, a libertarian economist, focused much of his campaign on economic proposals, casting blame on successive administrations for printing money with abandon to fund state spending. Ahead of the first round, Milei sometimes carried a chainsaw at rallies, a symbol of his intention to cut state spending.

In the run-up to the vote, Massa and his allies had cautioned Argentines that his opponent’s plan to eliminate key ministries would threaten public services, including health and education, and welfare programs many rely on.

Milei accused his opponent of running a “campaign of fear” and, in his final campaign spot, stared starkly into the camera and promised he would not privatise education, healthcare or soccer clubs.

The wide margin of Milei’s victory suggests voters agreed that the hype was overblown, and were turned off, said Andrei Roman, chief executive of Brazil-based pollster Atlas Intel, one of the only pollsters to correctly call the election’s first round. There was a virtual tie in the province of Buenos Aires, home to almost 37 per cent of the national electorate and a key bastion of Peronism. Massa kicked his party’s machine into overdrive there to bring in votes – but to little avail, representing “the total defeat of Peronism,” Roman said.

Milei has been compared with former presidents Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Donald Trump in the US.Credit: Bloomberg

“Massa’s campaign pushed the strategy of fear regarding Milei a lot and I think it backfired,” he said, highlighting one of Massa’s spots that showed a young child picking up a stray gun and shooting his friend. Such issues are hardly people’s primary concerns, so they see it as “just foul play, and a cheap, unconvincing strategy.”

Some of Milei’s positions appear to echo those of more conservative Republicans in the US; he opposes sex education, feminist policies and abortion, which is legal in Argentina, and rejects the notion that humans have a role in causing climate change.

His fiery, profanity-laden rhetoric has already inserted the country into the global culture war that has overwhelmed political discourse in the US and Brazil.

Like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the former presidents of those nations, Milei had made unfounded claims of election fraud before Sunday’s runoff vote that many analysts said raised concern about him eroding democratic norms.

Milei’s rise also means the rise of Victoria Villaruel, his controversial running mate who has worked for years to change the prevailing narrative regarding Argentina’s brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship.

She has long said that the number of victims is far below what human rights organisations have long claimed.

“Despite Milei, despite all his campaign mistakes, despite all his peculiarities that raise doubts, concerns … despite all of that, the demand for change prevailed,” said Lucas Romero, the head of Synopsis, a local political consulting firm.

AP

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