APART from president-elect Javier Milei, perhaps the happiest man in Argentina is US ambassador Marc Stanley who was quick to congratulate the far-right, self-styled libertarian on his stunning election victory on November 19.

In a tweet, he said that he hoped that their two nations could work together for the benefit of both countries, including in the protection of human rights, democracy and the fight against climate change, none of which are of the slightest interest to either of them.

The US already has considerable influence in Argentina, particularly in the agricultural sector which is dominated by the production of genetically grown soya beans drenched in carcinogenic agrochemicals produced by US multinational corporations.

What is of particular interest to the US is access to Argentina’s huge lithium reserves that have hitherto been under varying degrees of public control. Milei has already promised to privatise the state oil company YPF and will have no qualms in handing over lithium mining rights to foreign capital, providing he can overcome local opposition.

To promote his ultra-neoliberal programme, Milei will, ironically, need the support of a political class who he affected to despise during his election campaign. Sometimes branding a chainsaw to symbolise the cutting down of the established order, Milei delivered a series of often foul-mouthed rants against his political opponents, pointing out that they were responsible for one in four Argentinians living in poverty and for annual inflation rates of 140 per cent.

In the October general election, which included a percentage of congressional seats, Milei was beaten into second place by the current Economy Minister, Sergio Massa, while the right-wing Juntos por el Cambio (JXC) coalition candidate, Patricia Bullrich, came a poor third.

During one of his tirades, Milei accused Bullrich of once being a terrorist who planted bombs in children’s schools, an accusation that prompted the latter to threaten legal action.
 
This did not prevent Mauricio Macri, the JXC leader from pledging his organisation’s support for Milei in last Sunday’s runoff without bothering to consult any of his coalition partners, a move that was seen as an act of treachery by the Radical Party element of the alliance who could not stomach support for someone they (rightly) considered to be a dangerous extremist.
 
Macri was President of Argentina from 2015 to 2019. The titular head of a Cantabrian Mafia family, he negotiated an unprecedented $57 billion loan from the IMF to prop up an ailing economy, most of which left the country as quickly as it entered it.

A report by the general auditor’s office in May of this year revealed what everyone already knew; that the 2018 deal broke several laws and protocols, prompting the incumbent president, Alberto Fernandez to say that “more than a debt, it was a crime.”

It was not Macri’s only transgression, so it came as no surprise to hear that he feared being arrested if Massa was elected. Whether that would have happened is pure conjecture, but Macri seized the opportunity that was presented to him by brokering a rapprochement between Milei and Bullrich (his former security minister) and pledging their support.

Both were present at Milei’s election bunker in Buenos Aires’ hotel Libertador on election night and Macri knows that Milei needs the support of his deputies in congress to push through his legislative programme.

If some of Milei’s supporters were concerned that his alliance with Macri was completely at odds with his oft-repeated contempt for “la casta” — the old political class — and might put voters off, they need not have worried.

Opinion polls were saying that the election was too close to call, especially after the mauling Milei received from Massa during their televised debate on October 12, yet when the results came, they showed that Milei had won 55.6 per cent of the vote, the largest margin of victory since constitutional government was restored in 1983 following the fall of the military dictatorship.

He won in 20 out of 23 Argentina’s provinces, the only exceptions being in Santiago del Estero, Formosa and Buenos Aires — and won despite a manifesto containing the most extreme right-wing measures ever presented to an Argentinian electorate.

They include a promise to scrap the central bank, introduce a voucher system for education, privatisation of all state entities including hospitals, railways and pension provision and a pledge to allow people to use whatever currency they choose in a “free market” — which inevitably will mean the US dollar.

In spite of his supposed commitment to free trade, Milei said he would not do business with either China or Brazil, because they are “communist” — an absurd proposition given that they are Argentina’s prime trading partners and, in the former case, a prominent creditor.

During the lead-up to the poll, Milei said nothing about the national debt and how he would deal with the IMF whose managing director, Kristalina Georgieva has already said that she looked forward to doing business with him. Maybe that has something to do with the $18.5 million repayment instalment that comes due in the new year.

There is nothing in Milei’s neoliberal proposals that has not been tried before — and they have failed before too. He cites Carlos Menem, who served two terms from 1989 to 1999, as being the best president of modern times.

Menem shut down most of the railway network, sold off state enterprises at knockdown prices and effectively turned Argentina into a service economy at a cost of millions unemployed and a subsequent explosion of social unrest at the turn of the century.

None of this deters Milei who paraphrases Donald Trump by saying that he will return the republic to 19th century values and “make Argentina great” to the extent that it will be a world power “in 35 years.”

He has publicly stated that he admires Margaret Thatcher, thus disrespecting the memory of those who fell in the Malvinas/Falklands conflict, and his deputy, Victoria Villarruel has openly questioned the 40-year consensus surrounding the crimes of the dictatorship by stating that the military had the right to kill “terrorists.”

Despite all this, and in spite of the millions of pesos spent by the Peronist electoral machine to the extent that hardly a wall in Argentina was left without a poster of Massa and his promise to deliver the country that “we have all been waiting for,” an ample majority voted for Milei.

It has been a meteoric rise for him and his fledging La Libertad Advanza party which was unheard of four years ago. If there is genuine support for him in some quarters, there is no doubt that millions of Argentinians were not voting for Milei but rather against Massa and four years of a government that, as Milei never tired of pointing out, gave them nothing.

In addition to the poverty indicators mentioned above, the cost of renting a property has gone up by 600 per cent in three years and voters have simply had enough of struggling to make ends meet in the face of soaring inflation and rising costs.

President Fernandez is leaving office on December 10 with the lowest approval rating of any president since the dictatorship, even worse than Macri. For his part, Milei the libertarian has wasted no time in showing his true colours by announcing that he will be visiting the US and Israel before he takes office and that the Argentinian embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It seems that his libertarian beliefs do not extend to Palestine.

Milei’s hero is the 19th century political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi who was influential in drawing up the 1853 constitution and who was a supporter of liberalism. It didn’t end well for him and he died in an obscure sanitorium in Neuilly, France.

We can only hope that Milei’s descent into obscurity comes sooner rather than later — but difficult, and probably chaotic, times lie ahead.