Sworn-in as president of Argentina, Javier Milei, signed his first executive order as he reduced the Argentine government from 21 Ministries to 9.
Clip of Javier Milei greeting school kids have gone viral.
Argentina has elected a right-wing populist known as “el Loco” (the Madman) as its new president.
Javier Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who has been compared to former US president Donald Trump, promised to deal with Argentina’s soaring inflation and rising poverty.
“The model of decadence has come to an end, there’s no going back,” Mr Milei said in a defiant speech after winning 56% of the vote versus just 44% for his rival, economy minister Sergio Massa, who conceded.
It was the widest victory margin in a presidential race since the South American country returned to democracy in 1983.
“We have monumental problems ahead: inflation, lack of work, and poverty,” he said. “The situation is critical and there is no place for tepid half-measures.”
Mr Milei’s plans to fix the economy include shutting the central bank, ditching the peso and slashing spending. Milei’s biography suggests some of those ideas may have come from his five cloned mastiff dogs who are named after economists including Murray Rothbard and Robert Lucas. “They are like two metres tall, they weigh like 100kg … He calls them his four-legged children,” said Lemoine, laughing off claims that Argentina’s future leader takes political advice from those animals.
Many experts believe Milei will be forced to moderate after taking power next month and will struggle to implement his more controversial proposals. Milei’s party controls just 38 of 257 seats in Argentina’s lower house and eight of 72 in the senate.
But on Sunday night Milei showed little sign of diluting his vision for South America’s second largest economy. “The changes this country needs are drastic,” he declared, announcing Trumpian plans to make Argentina great again.
Even before Milei’s victory was complete, Lemoine said she was certain her friend – and his sideburns – would prevail.
That has not always been the case. An unauthorised biography of Milei – who on Sunday trounced his Peronist rival in Argentina’s most important election in decades – paints him as a mercurial loner who suffered a childhood of parental abuse and schoolyard bullying during the 1980s and was given the nickname El Loco (The Madman). “More than Milei’s ideas, what worries me is his state of mind and emotional stability,” said the book’s author, Juan Luis González.
A music-lover, Milei was the lead singer of a Rolling Stones cover band called Everest and, according to Lemoine, also enjoys Bob Marley and Verdi. “He loves opera. He sings opera. He’s not very good – but don’t say I said that,” she confided.