Argentine presidential candidate for the La Libertad Avanza alliance Javier Milei waves to supporters after winning the presidential election runoff at his party headquarters in Buenos Aires on November 19, 2023. - Libertarian outsider Javier Milei pulled off a massive upset Sunday with a resounding win in Argentina's presidential election, a stinging rebuke of the traditional parties that have overseen decades of economic decline. (Photo by Luis ROBAYO / AFP)
He seems at times a madman, at other times, the only sane person in the lunatic asylum… but the libertarian, Javier Milei, has turned Argentinian politics upside down with his wild hair and powered-up chainsaw.
He’s been elected president after promising to “dynamite” the central bank, ditch the ailing peso for the dollar and slash public spending.
He’s being compared to the abrasive Donald Trump, whose own political ambitions were dismissed by the snobbish US political class, even as he appealed to the ordinary person… the person who felt abandoned by the government amid a changing world.
Argentinians, and particularly the youth, listened to him because their political establishment has wrecked the country.
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So, why should we care about this in South Africa?
We are not that different to Argentina.
Our political elite, thriving on corruption and ignoring inefficiency, is undermining the faith of people – not only in the ruling ANC but in our current political system as a whole.
We are ripe for the emergence of a radical rabble-rouser whose populist rantings will, in the end, be worse medicine than the disease he or she wants to cure.
Mind you, that sounds a bit like the current Julius Malema…
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