Long live freedom, dammit!”. With his usual war cry, Javier Milei, president-elect of Argentina, dismissed this week the broadcast on the networks of the 23rd and last draw of his salary as a deputy. So, just as it sounds. A kind of anarcho-capitalist lottery – to use the term with which he defines himself – that he presented as a campaign promise in 2021 and that he instituted in January of the following year after being elected to parliament. Milei, mobile phone in hand, was the animator of the draw, held every month and supervised by a notary. Bye now. It is assumed that, in the presidency, he will have no choice but to live off his official remuneration. In the last raffle, on Wednesday, 2,850,000 people opted for the prize, which amounted to 1,762,835 pesos (which, at the close of this article, was equivalent to 4,509 euros)
Milei, with sideburns in the style of Curro Jiménez, distributing his own salary among the poor… As a populist gesture, he has no parion. Not even his idolized Donald Trump – just as demagogic but more miserly – got to that point.
Between the elected president of Argentina – who will take office on December 10 – and the former president of the United States – in the midst of a campaign to return to the White House -, there are enormous similarities, beyond the remarkable hair compositions . In addition to a common admiration. For Milei, Trump has been “one of the best presidents in the history of the USA” and he hastened to congratulate the Argentine on his victory on Sunday, assuring that he felt “very proud” and predicting that his southern counterpart “will that Argentina will be great again”. Make Argentina great again…
Trump and Milei, Milei and Trump, both characters have a lot of similarities, even though one is a real millionaire and the other is not (although he gives away the money as if he were). Both are political outsiders, who entered the arena after gaining popularity through radio and television (in quite disparate formats, but shamelessly similar). Both address people on the street, the excluded, the forgotten, the resentful of the system. And they offer them a virulent speech against the establishment, caste, both in Washington and in Buenos Aires. In the case of the Argentine, brandishing a chainsaw – in Leatherface attitude in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – to symbolize the promise to cut dry.
Both also pretend to speak the supposed language of the people. In other words, bluntly. His brusqueness and rudeness dazzle his followers. And if there are insults and rude words, even better. In the latter, the Argentine president-elect is difficult to beat, it is his temperament. In 2013, he was fired from the Argentine University of Business (UADE) – where he taught the subject of monetary and fiscal policy – for abusing and insulting his students. Then he started doing it on radio and television talk shows and it was a huge success. When someone dares to call Pope Francis “moron” and calls him “the representative of evil on Earth”, it shows that he stops at nothing and no one.
Extravagant and excessive, aggressive and insolent, his adversaries have repeatedly called into question his mental balance, helped by television appearances in which he appeared disturbed. And also some of his most radical – and disturbing – economic proposals. But, crazy or not, Milei has managed to seduce large sections of Argentine society, especially the poorest, punished by a severe economic crisis and unbearable inflation (of more than 140%) that has eaten away at their savings. “It seems that his greatest strength has been to have represented the antithesis of traditional politics and to have interpreted the irritation of a good part of society”, wrote Luciano Román in La Nación. Support for Milei is a vote of protest, a kick, a vent, from the conviction that nothing can get worse. But it is not true. Everything can always get worse.
A far-right populist, Milei is in favor of making the legislation on the possession of weapons more flexible, he has justified the military dictatorship of 1976-1983 – which caused 30,000 murders and disappearances -, he rejects abortion and is skeptical of change climate, which he attributes to left-wing propaganda. In a crusading tone, he defends the break with Russia and China, even though the latter country represents 21.5% of Argentina’s imports and 9% of its exports.
But perhaps what is most worrying are its heterodox and radical economic prescriptions. Inspired by the so-called Austrian school, Milei hates the State, which he considers an “enemy”, before which he advocates the almost absolute freedom of the individual. On the agenda is a massive privatization of public companies, a drastic cut in state spending, with the elimination of entire ministries, such as those of Education or Health, and a stoppage of public works. The star measure is the dollarization of the economy, that is to say, the replacement of the Argentine peso – which he described as “excrement” – by the American dollar. Consequently, he plans to abolish the central bank… Total, the monetary decisions will be taken by the Federal Reserve of the USA!
It’s too early to tell how far Milei can go with her program. But many of his voters will soon find out that there are no magic solutions and that – to begin with – they will probably end up worse than they were. It’s also quite possible that, like Trump voters, they are completely the same.
