Javier Milei, the libertarian candidate who capitalizes on discontent in Argentina

Until a little less than two years ago, Javier Milei was a provocative economist with curly black hair and an easy insult.

Political television programs loved him: with his incendiary verve and without a filter, he ensured the show.

But in 2019 he decided to leave economic analysis, ran for deputy and won.

Nobody took him very seriously until he announced his intention to run for president and began to rise in the polls.

The worse Argentina is doing, the better Milei is doing, who has been able to attract the harsh vote of those who disbelieve in politics.

This week, the libertarian candidate recorded a video to present his "chainsaw plan", a mix of ultra-liberal ideas where there are no ministries of Education, Health, Public Works or Social Development,

The crisis that Argentina is experiencing is taking its toll on politicians.

Economic stagnation and social frustration due to the lack of a future give rise to emerging figures who promise to blow up everything to start from scratch.

The formula served Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, when a contagion was feared in Argentina.

But Peronism, in its Kirchnerist version, found the formula to neutralize any individual anti-system adventure and prevailed in the 2019 elections. The failure of that experiment, with Alberto Fernández as president and Cristina Kirchner as vice president, opened the door of Congress to Milei in the midterm elections.

And since then, his figure has not stopped growing.

Milei's Libertad Avanza is today the third political force in Argentina, and no one laughs at her electoral chances anymore.

An average of six national polls carried out by the

newspaper gave the economist 17% of the vote.

It is, with five months to go before the mandatory primary elections and seven for the general ones, just behind the two great coalitions that today dominate the Argentine scene: the ruling Frente de Todos (25%) and Juntos por el Cambio (27%). .

Milei has managed to break the polarization, installing himself from the sidelines as an electoral referee.

In the last days he concentrated all his forces in a national army that gives him strength in the interior of the country.

Troubled river fishing.

When Peronism does not order, the stampede of local leaders abounds.

Mieli was associated with all kinds of characters.

In Tucumán (north), for example, she has Ricardo Bussi, the son of a former military man convicted of crimes against humanity, as a candidate for governor.

Bussi presented his candidacy with a video where he shoots at a stationary target amid images of assaults on civilians.

“May the next life not be yours,” she says on camera.

Milei took the glove from Buenos Aires.

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why he defended the free carrying of arms

he responded with the style that is already his trademark campaign: "Why are you in favor of good Argentines suffering like rats in front of the delinquents?

Milei's voters do not necessarily defend the free carrying of arms, propose the sale of organs, want an end to free education or call for the burning of the Central Bank to end against inflation.

He joins the protest against everything established and agrees that politicians are "a bunch of criminals and thieves."

“Politicians tremble.

Keep lying to people.

She doesn't like our plan because from there you can't bite, you're going to be left without stealing and you're going to have to work like honest people,” Milei said during the presentation of her plan.

Her catchphrase is "I hate fucking lefties."

And to differentiate himself from "the caste", every month he raffles his salary as a national deputy.

Milei's electoral growth is already a problem for the traditional parties.

His voters are mostly young and middle-class, but they also grow up in the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires that were traditionally Peronist.

The government can do little.

The inflation data for February released on Tuesday reached 6.6% and the interannual rate exceeded 100% for the first time since 1991. As the crisis deepens and social ill-temper grows, the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, loses bellows as a possible consensus candidate in a Peronism that today bleeds to death in internal fights.

He is no better off for Juntos por el Cambio, the opposition coalition created by former President Mauricio Macri.

Milei's speech forces the pre-candidates of the center, in particular the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires,

Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, to swing to the right.

And at the same time he gives wings to the most extremist figures of the alliance, such as the former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and Mauricio Macri himself.

That Milei ended up engulfed by Together for Change seemed like a no-brainer months ago.

But the deputy is growing in the polls and getting his support is getting higher and higher.

His aspiration is to go to a second round in the October elections and capture all the possible discontent at the polls.

Milei no longer causes laughter.

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