Trapped in galloping inflation that he has been unable to control, unpopular Argentine President Alberto Fernandez is not running in the elections on Sunday, October 22. Victory will therefore be played between Patricia Bullrich on the right, Sergio Massa on the center left and the libertarian favorite Javier Milei.
In the arena of Javier Milei’s last campaign meeting, the libertarian candidate’s slogan presents him as “the one-stop solution” for Argentina. A few days before the presidential elections on Sunday, October 22, for the 40th anniversary of its democracy, the Argentine people are placing an anti-system, libertarian, particularly vulgar and insulting candidate at the top of the polls. His name: Javier Milei. A right-wing Argentine populist, he clearly ranks in line with Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States.
A stage beast, former rock singer
The stadium is packed. On the giant screen, a lion’s head on fire which recalls the disheveled unstructured hairstyle of this “OPDI”: Political Object Difficult to identify. His raspy voice harangues with arrogance:“Hello everyone, I am the lion, I am the king of a lost world.” Then, at the end of his speech, he repeatedly asserts “Long live freedom p…!”. The usual swear word from Javier Milei, who explains his immense popularity by the fact of having been a rock singer, a football player in the past and who today highlights his training as an economist.
Javier Milei’s dearest wish is to shatter the political class established in Argentina for 40 years. To do this, he is of course pressing where it hurts, starting with the galloping inflation which has been eating away at the country for two decades and which has increased by another 124% in one year. Milei wants to put an end to the Argentine central bank, “dynamize it”prefers the dollar to the peso, which he describes “excrement”of “waste”not serving “not even making fertilizer”.
Social justice “is theft”, an “aberration”
Milei promises to deregulate everything, to reduce the State to its bare minimum. And we should definitely not talk to him about social justice, or about the latest Argentinian figure to overshadow him, Pope Francis: “The Pope, I will tell you to your face, is the representative of the devil on Earth. We must explain to this imbecile who is in Rome, he who defends social justice, so that he knows that it is theft and it goes against the commandments. It is a capital sin. We can disguise it under the pretty name “social justice”, it remains an aberration. Since when is it a good thing to treat people like the same way? Never!”
In addition to being anti-system, anti-social, neoliberal, Javier Milei places himself in the anti-abortion, pro-gun and climate skeptic camps. He wants everything “cut with chainsaw”a tool that he uses regularly in his meetings, a tool which is also the symbol of far-right paramilitary groups throughout Latin America.
Javier Milei provokes, shocks, fascinates and also worries. The candidate lives alone with his five dogs, all born from the genetic cloning of his first faithful companion, “Conan”. A companion who died a few years ago, but with whom Milei says she continues to communicate. According to the latest polls, it is this man, nicknamed “El loco” (“the fool”) by his classmates when he was little, that according to polls more than 30% of Argentines intend to cast their vote on Sunday.