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Argentinian President Javier Milei\u2019s party has pulled off a stunning win in the country\u2019s legislative elections, according to early results, boosting his ability to push forward with his radical overhaul of the economy, including free-market reforms and deep austerity measures.<\/p>\n
Milei\u2019s party, La Libertad Avanza, scored 40.84 percent of the votes cast for members of Congress on Sunday, compared with 31.64 percent for the opposition Peronist coalition, early results showed.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The results were based on a count of more than 90 percent of ballots cast.<\/p>\n The midterm elections were the first national test of Milei\u2019s support since he won office two years ago, and will help him maintain the support of United States President Donald Trump, whose administration recently provided Argentina with a hefty financial bailout but has threatened to pull away if the libertarian leader did not do well.<\/p>\n At La Libertad Avanza\u2019s headquarters on Sunday, Milei hailed the party\u2019s victory as a \u201cturning point\u201d for the country and promised to charge ahead with his reforms.<\/p>\n Beaming as his supporters cheered, he seized on the results as evidence that Argentina had turned the page on decades of Peronism that had brought the country infamy for repeatedly defaulting on its sovereign debt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Argentinian people left decadence behind and opted for progress,\u201d Milei said, thanking \u201call those who supported the ideas of freedom to make Argentina great again\u201d.<\/p>\n In Sunday\u2019s elections, half of the seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies, or 127 seats, and one-third of the upper Senate, or 24 seats, were up for grabs.<\/p>\n Milei said his party has now tripled its seat count, winning 101 seats in the lower house, up from 37, and 20 seats in the Senate, up from six.<\/p>\n The most surprising results of Sunday\u2019s election were in Buenos Aires province, where Milei\u2019s party clawed its way back from defeat in last month\u2019s local elections to run neck-and-neck with the Peronists.<\/p>\n The province has long been a political stronghold for the Peronists, and the win for Milei\u2019s party marked a dramatic political shift.<\/p>\n The strong showing in Sunday\u2019s election ensures Milei will have enough support in Congress to uphold presidential vetoes, prevent an impeachment effort, and see through his ambitious plans for tax and labour reforms in the coming months.<\/p>\n To support Milei, the Trump administration offered a bailout potentially worth $40bn, including a $20bn currency swap, which is already signed, and a proposed $20bn debt investment facility.<\/p>\n Trump has threatened to pull away if his populist ally performed poorly, warning that \u201cif he doesn\u2019t win, we\u2019re not going to waste our time, because you have somebody whose philosophy has no chance of making Argentina great again\u201d.<\/p>\n There was no immediate comment from the White House on Milei\u2019s win.<\/p>\n Al Jazeera\u2019s Teresa Bo, reporting from Buenos Aires, said that Trump\u2019s interest in Milei may have influenced the decisions of some of the voters.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, the United States played a crucial role in the last stage leading to this election,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cPeople here listened, and in a way, it may have convinced many to vote for Javier Milei\u2019s party.\u201d<\/p>\n The results were a surprise, she said, \u201cafter the president\u2019s party lost by 14 points in the province of Buenos Aires last month to the Peronist opposition after one of the harshest austerity plans in this country\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n Analysts said the stronger-than-expected showing could reflect fear of renewed economic turmoil if the country abandoned Milei\u2019s policies, which, while painful at times, have succeeded in drastically slowing inflation.<\/p>\n Gustavo Cordoba, the director of the Zuban Cordoba polling firm, told the Reuters news agency that he was shocked by the results and thought they reflected public wariness over a possible return to the economic crises of past governments.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people were willing to give the government another chance,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll see how much time Argentine society gives the Argentine government. But the triumph is unobjectionable, unquestionable.\u201d<\/p>\n Milei, a key ideological ally of Trump who has slashed state spending and liberalised Argentina\u2019s economy after decades of budget deficits and protectionism, had a lot riding on Sunday\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n Milei\u2019s government has been scrambling to avert a currency crisis ever since the defeat by the Peronist opposition in a provincial election last month panicked markets and prompted a selloff in the peso \u2013 a move that led to the US Treasury\u2019s extraordinary intervention.<\/p>\n A series of scandals \u2013 including bribery allegations against Milei\u2019s powerful sister, Karina Milei \u2013 hurt the president\u2019s image as an anticorruption crusader and hit a nerve among voters reeling from his harsh austerity measures.<\/p>\n Although the budget cuts have significantly driven down inflation, from an annual high of 289 percent in April 2024 to just 32 percent last month, many Argentinians are still struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n Price rises have outpaced salaries and pensions since Milei cut cost-of-living increases. Households pay more for electricity and public transport since Milei cut subsidies. The unemployment rate is now higher than when the libertarian president took office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Argentinian President Javier Milei\u2019s party has pulled off a stunning win in the country\u2019s legislative elections, according to early results, boosting his ability to push forward with his radical overhaul of the economy, including free-market reforms and deep austerity measures. Milei\u2019s party, La Libertad Avanza, scored 40.84 percent of the votes cast for members of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Milei\u2019s party triples seat count<\/h2>\n
\u2018Unobjectionable, unquestionable\u2019<\/h2>\n
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