“Today begins the reconstruction of Argentina,” announced Javier Milei, the president-elect elected by the country’s citizens with nearly 56 percent of the votes, late on Sunday evening, in his first speech after the announcement of the results of the second round of elections.
- On Sunday, November 19, in the second round of voting, Argentines elected 53-year-old extreme right-wing liberal Javier Milei as their new president for a four-year term.
- The president-elect announced that he would quickly make “historic changes” in a country that is “experiencing the most severe crisis in its history.”
“This is a historic night for our country, the beginning of the end of decadence,” Milei said, promising that “Argentina will return to the path from which it should never stray.”
A supporter of extreme economic liberalism in state policy, he announced that “historic changes” would be made quickly in a country that is “experiencing the most severe crisis in its history.”
The president-elect has already announced drastic changes in Argentina
The president-elect warned his countrymen that “the changes Argentina needs will be drastic because there is no time to gradually or mitigate them.”
Changing the tone of his speech, Milei assured that “without regard to where they come from or what they have done so far, we will welcome all those who want to start building a new Argentina.”
Finally, the winner of the presidential election expressed his belief that “Argentina, guided by the ideas of freedom, will finally return to the group of world powers.”
The winner of the first round of elections, 51-year-old Massa, lost to his rival – a dynamic extreme liberal, a supporter of dollarization of the Argentine economy and ensuring personal security for Argentines through universal access to weapons.
It was the most fierce election campaign in Argentina’s history
In the first comments, Latin American media describe the election campaign as “the most fierce in Argentine history.”
In the week before the second round of voting, a group of over a hundred Argentine intellectuals and scientists published a document in which they warned about the dangers for society that lie behind some of Milei’s “extremely libertarian” proposals, including his proposed “reduction to a minimum” of public spending.
The Argentine media, like Minister Sergio Massa, in their comments on the program proposed by the future president to reduce state spending for public purposes as much as possible, warn of the inevitable “social catastrophe” that this program will lead to. The aim of this move is to combat the highest, three-digit inflation in the region.
One of Milei’s supporters appeared publicly at the end of the election campaign with a chainsaw in his hand, referring to the plan proposed by this politician, and now president-elect, to cut state spending on health care.
Photos from this event were circulated in the Argentine media, which, however, did not prevent the growth of support among Argentine voters for the supporter of ultra-radical cuts intended to heal the Argentine economy, which is in deep crisis.
In the first comments, Latin American electronic media emphasize the good organization and peaceful course of voting in nearly seventeen thousand Argentine polling stations. Voting is compulsory in Argentina for 35.8 million citizens. 86,000 soldiers and policemen ensured its safe course.
The Peronist candidate admitted his defeat in the presidential elections
Sergio Massa, the candidate of the Union for the Fatherland, which represents the Peronist left that had been ruling in Argentina in the presidential elections, admitted his defeat and congratulated his rival by telephone even before the official results of Sunday’s second round of voting were announced.
“I do this in the belief,” Massa said, “that the most important message we should send to Argentines is coexistence, living together in dialogue and respect for peace.”
