He has hair that identifies him in a match, like Boris Johnson, and sideburns that the Carlos Menem of the ’80s wouldn’t disdain. On stage or on television, he is as abrasive as Donald Trump, and when Lula da Silva won the Brazilian presidential election, he called up the defeated Jair Bolsonaro to congratulate him on the result. Javier Milei is the political sensation of the moment, taking first place in the public, simultaneous and mandatory primaries (PASO), taking advantage of the deep economic crisis and a political system dominated by the duopoly of Peronism and the right.

The PASO ruled out 23 candidatures – there are now five candidates for the first round of the presidential election, which will take place on October 22 – but above all they made economist Javier Milei the main character. Despite the fact that voting is compulsory between the ages of 18 and 70, there was a high abstention rate (30.4%) and even 6% blank and invalid votes, signs of disenchantment with the political class, the same as Milei promises to send “with spades under the ass”.

In the hotel where Milei awaited the result, celebrations were held as if the candidate was already Alberto Fernández’s successor, while at the door his followers shouted “the caste is afraid”. The polls predicted 20% of the vote and the leader of Liberdade Avança ended up with 30%, surpassing the vote of the right-wing coalition Together for Change (28.2%) that chose Patricia Bullrich over Buenos Aires mayor Horacio Rodriguez. Larreta.

In third place (27.2%) was the Peronist-Kirchnerist bloc, with voters choosing Sergio Massa, who promises a government of “national unity”, but the numbers are against the current economy minister. Not so much because he entered the election campaign third, but because the country is struggling with an inflation rate of 115% and 43% of the population lives below the poverty line – which will help explain the absence of President Fernández and Vice President Fernández from the campaign Cristina Kirchner .

Javier Milei, 52, who thrived in the quagmire of a political system that hadn’t learned the lessons of the 2001 bankruptcy. A defender of less state interference in the economy, he made himself known outside academia as a press columnist and radio program author, until he became a popular lecturer and social network personality who did not shy away from insults. To gain support, he has no problem resorting to populist means, such as paying the deputy’s salary through a lottery.

And what does Milei stand for? His ideas wander among the neoliberalism emerging from the so-called Austrian school, a self-declared anarcho-capitalist, that is, the opposition to almost everything that belongs to the state. In particular, to end inflation, Milei proposes to exchange the Argentine peso for the dollar and then “dynamit” the Central Bank, which she says is the source of all the country’s problems.

If he reaches the presidency, the economist wants to eliminate most ministries, including Education, but when he said he would close the Women’s Ministry, controversy erupted. “I’m not going to ask forgiveness for having a penis,” was his argument, to which Guardianship Minister Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta replied in kind: “It seems ridiculous to shut down a ministry for having a penis.” In addition to being against feminism, he spoke out against abortion, legalization of which was approved in 2020. Other measures he defends are the freedom to carry arms and the creation of a market for organs for transplantation. On the environment, he says climate change is “a lie of socialism”.

By having Eduardo Bolsonaro as a friend and maintaining close ties with Vox, the Spanish far-right party, Milei shows that he is not just a “libertarian”. And if it is true that he does not say he is nostalgic for the military dictatorship that ruled the country with an iron fist between 1976 and 1983, then he has Victoria Villarruel as number two, who wants to rewrite history, claiming that the left exaggerates the number victims of repression.

For more than a year, political scientist Ana Iparraguirre had been anticipating Milei’s “real” chances of reaching Casa Rosada. “What worries me most is that this malicious speech, with its anti-democratic streaks, could leave long-lasting scars more serious than the one that wins,” he told the Washington message.

Number two denies crimes of the dictatorship

Victoria Eugenia Villarruel, 48, is the nominee for vice president alongside Milei, repeating the position that saw both elected deputies to the 2021 legislature. Her profile is unostentatious, but no less controversial.

Daughter of a lieutenant colonel who took part in military operations deemed “genocide” by the court in 2012 – the death of 30,000 people -, the lawyer gained notoriety for denying the crimes of the dictatorship. He founded a study center on terrorism, defending that the real victims were the military, and accuses Kirchnerism of protecting the ex-guerrillas who survived.

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