"Does anyone consider it right to steal?" The question, formulated by Javier Milei, a candidate in Argentina's October 22 presidential election, fell flat. His audience, made up of business leaders, had come to attend the Council of the Americas conference in Buenos Aires on August 24, but appeared to resist his humor. In the end, a timid "no" could be heard. The 52-year-old economist only hoped for an answer enabling him to bounce back: "Well, then why are we going to allow the government to steal?"
After his surprise breakthrough in the primaries on August 13 – a compulsory ballot that acts as a dress rehearsal for the presidential election where he came out on top with 29.86% of the vote – Milei still has to win over the establishment if he is to win the election. For almost 50 minutes, he unfolded a radical and controversial program with drastic cuts in public spending, the lowering of taxes, a "state reform" with the number of ministries cut to eight, the closure of the Central Bank, and a "dollarization" of the economy, the outright disappearance of the peso in favor of the United States currency that is. "You have to get Argentina back on its feet, and I promise to get rid of the state," he told entrepreneurs, who applauded him albeit with little enthusiasm.
The economy is at the heart of the program of his ultraliberal and conservative coalition, La Libertad Avanza ("Liberty advances"). In a country crushed by galloping inflation, which stood at 124.4% year-on-year in August, and a poverty rate of 40%, his proposals to end both the printing of money and the "parasitic political caste" are getting attention. His positions on other issues also contribute to his image as an anti-establishment outsider. He says he favors organ sales and free gun ownership and does not find it absurd that society should allow the sale of children. "Guys, get out of mental slavery! Be free!" he said recently.
Polls put him ahead in the first round, ahead of the center-left Peronist, current Economy Minister Sergio Massa, and right-wing candidate Patricia Bullrich. How did this admirer of former US president Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, an assertive climate skeptic and an all-round liberal courted by Spain's far-right Vox party – he once mentioned the possibility of "privatizing streets" – manage to reach the country's presidential gates just two years after bursting onto the political scene?
Born in Buenos Aires in 1970 to a mother who was a housewife and a father who ran a transport company, Milei turned to a career in football and then rock music. He developed a passion for economics, graduating from the private University of Belgrano, not Argentina's most prestigious. He taught there, lectured, and wrote articles. In 2016, he was invited to appear on a television program and quickly became a favorite on the sets. Television outlets were keen to host the eccentric provocateur. With his black pinstripe suit jacket, penetrating blue eyes, and expertly disheveled hair – "I'm combed by the invisible hand of the market," he once said – he was quickly known for his scolding, shouting, and insults: "You're an idiot (...) you don't know a damn thing [about economics]!" he shouted at a journalist during a long, humiliating sequence in 2018.
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