Libertarian extremist Javier Gerardo Milei of the Freedom Advances Party (LLA) registered a big win in Argentina's November 19, 2023 run-off Presidential Elections, defeating Sergio Tomás Massa of the ruling Union for the Fatherland (UxP) coalition (56%-44%). This was a rout for Massa and represented a resounding condemnation of the Government of Alberto Fernandez, who failed to follow through on any of the promises he had made to rebuild the economy in 2019, after defeating the ultra-corrupt and pro-IMF President Mauricio Macri.
Instead, the Government, in which Sergio Massa was Economy Minister, constantly made disastrous concessions to the IMF. For Massa to win, they would have had to sharply reverse the course and immediately launch a physical-economic recovery programme in conjunction with China and the BRICS (a coalition of five Developed and Developing nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as proposed by the Schiller Institute.
Neither Massa nor Fernández heeded this policy advice and the Latin American country descended into an ever deeper financial crisis, which no amount of fancy footwork could remedy. Massa was dealing with constant financial warfare from the London and Wall Street bankers, as well as the IMF; a severe shortage of foreign reserves, uncontrolled inflation, rising interest rates and several devaluations. China came to the rescue with a USD 20 billion Yuan swap from the People's Bank of China to provide urgently needed reserves, but this could not address the deeper problems with the economy.
The deep anger and frustration felt by the Argentine people, the victims of this economic disaster, are reflected in the fact that Milei won in almost all the nation's interior provinces, and lost by only one percentage point in the all-important province of Buenos Aires, home to 37% of the nation's electorate and normally a Peronist stronghold. Unfortunately, Milei's victory appears to be one for Macri, who took over the libertarian's campaign after his poor performance in the first round of the elections four weeks ago (cf. SAS 43/23). Macri hopes to install his own neoliberal cronies in Milei's Cabinet, although Milei is thinking twice about taking orders from mafia figure Macri after his big victory.
Many voted for Milei because they wanted "change" and because Milei was an "outsider", but his massive win has not dispelled the uncertainty that is rampant in the population. In his first announcements on November 19-20, he laid out a fascist economic agenda straight from the Austrian school of economics. He has promised to impose drastic austerity in order to shrink what he called the "omnipresent state"; subsidies for public services will be eliminated; prices will be determined by "the market" and "anything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be". There is "no time for gradualism, no time for weakness," he told his followers on November 19, 2023.
Milei's future Foreign Minister and Neoliberal Economist Diana Mondino told Sputnik-Brazil on November 19 that she saw no reason why Argentina should join the BRICS as of January 1, 2024, as is now planned, since membership offers no particular benefit to the country. Milei, meanwhile, plans to make his first overseas trip to the US, followed by Israel.
This article was first published in Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) Strategic Alert weekly newsletter (Volume 37, No. 47) on November 23, 2023.
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