Javier Milei: Argentina’s president who speaks with dead dogs

Javier Milei shook Argentina’s political chessboard by emerging from relative obscurity. Before entering politics in 2021, he taught economics and authored several books, including “The Path of the Libertarian” and, his latest, “The End of Inflation”.

His band, named Everest, mainly covered Rolling Stones’ songs. Scarred by tumultuous childhood and perpetually enraged as an adult, he is the face of contemporary Argentina, a nation marked by simmering discontent.

He entered politics with an agenda against ‘the caste’, a term used for leaders from both the ruling Peronist movement and its opposition, Juntos por el Cambio. For the past two decades, these factions have dominated Argentina’s politics. Their roots go back to the rise of Juan and Eva Perón, who founded the Peronism movement.

“The worst garbage that exists on this earth”, is how Milei, a 52-year-old self-proclaimed libertarian and far-right populist, describes Argentina’s central bank. He proposes the abolition of the central bank to dollarise the economy amidst Argentina’s annual inflation rate of 124.4 percent.

After three years of drought that inflicted a $20 billion blow to the country, over 43 percent of Argentines wrestle with poverty. While an almost insurmountable $44 billion debt burden with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is smothering this South American country, Milei thinks a halt in printing money can offer some respite.

“It’s super-easy to dollarise Argentina. This would end the fraud of the peso, which is melting like ice cubes in the Sahara,” he said in an interview. According to the Buenos Aires Times, regarding the Central Bank’s role in controlling inflation, he had also said that last year the Central Bank robbed six points of gross domestic product via its inflation tax and this year it will rob six more points. So it’s a fraud and that happens because inflation is not a tax approved by Congress.

While global leaders, scientists, and businessmen are breaking their heads over finding solutions for climate change, Milei dismisses it as just another ‘socialist agenda’ in disguise. “The world has experienced other peaks of high temperatures like it's currently experiencing”, ABC News quoted him. He opines that it is ‘cyclical behaviour’.

Abortion, according to him, is also a ‘much darker side’ of the same agenda. He opposes Argentina’s law legalising abortion, passed in December 2020 and plans to do a referendum “to see whether Argentines believe in the homicide of a helpless human being who is in their mother’s womb,” and, if the result is against the law, he will repeal it.

Milei, a former small-time rock musician and athlete, is also of the opinion that the trade of human organs and sale of arms should be legalised as ‘it’s just another market’.

Continuing a series of explosive comments, he recently denounced Argentine Pope Francis as an ‘imbecile’ and ‘representative of evil’. His worldview also offers a sense of the contours of his potential foreign policy if he wins the presidential election.

When asked about China, he has a laconic response: it is “an assassin”. He plans to break off with China as he thinks “people aren’t free, they can’t do what they like and when they do, they get killed.” He firmly declares, “I don’t cut deals with Communists.”

On the other hand, he considers improving relations with the United States and Israel as his privilege. “My allies are the United States and Israel and, what’s more, I’ll move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” he had mentioned in the media.

Amidst Argentina’s political upheaval, Milei’s emergence as an unconventional force, aiming to challenge the political status quo in the country with his unapologetic rhetoric and bold policy proposals is resonating with the mass electorate. To sum up, as The Washington Post rightly mentions, “he represents what’s left after polarisation exhausts itself without offering any real solutions: pure anger”.