‘El Loco’ at the helm: What next for Argentina under outsider president Javier Milei?

A former TV personality-turned political maverick, Argentina’s president-elect Javier Milei has promised no half-measures as he bids to make his stricken country “great again”. Riding a wave of anti-establishment rage, the far-right outsider known for his foul-mouthed outbursts will have no time to bask in his stunning victory as he inherits an economy mired in crisis, with no experience and few allies to implement his radical agenda for change.

For years, Argentina’s discredited ruling class has been sitting on a powder keg, unable to lift the country out of a seemingly intractable crisis that has sowed anger and despair in South America’s second-largest economy.

On Sunday, the long-simmering anger boiled over, carrying to power a chainsaw-wielding political outsider who has promised to “blow up” the system and whose own supporters call him “El Loco” (the madman).

Milei, a former economist and TV pundit with almost no political experience, has surged to power on a wave of anger over decades of economic mismanagement. He has vowed to “put an end to the parasitic, stupid, useless political caste that is sinking” a country crippled by triple-digit inflation, where the poverty rate has reached 40%.

“Argentinians were forced to choose between two very unappealing options,” said Benjamin Gedan, head of the Washington-based Wilson Center's Latin America Program and director of its Argentina Project. He cautioned against reading the result as a wholehearted endorsement of Milei’s personality or agenda.

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