Milei confident he’ll win election in run-off

Libertarian lawmaker Javier Milei is confident that he will be elected Argentina’s next president and says he will win a run-off vote, regardless of his rival’s identity.

The La Libertad Avanza presidential hopeful said in an interview on Monday that he doesn’t care who his opponent is in a second round because “we beat them all.”

With analysts forecasting that no presidential candidate will win October’s election outright in the first round, Milei argued that polling backed him to qualify for the run-off in one of the top two spots. The 52-year-old deputy also believes he will win the run-off, whether his opponent is from the government or the opposition.

“Different studies today show that we are in the second round. Some show us fighting for first place with Juntos por el Cambio and others with Frente de Todos. The interesting thing is that no matter who we go to the second round with, we beat them all,” said Milei in an interview with Radio Rivadavia.

Milei, who this month confirmed his running-mate would be Victoria Villarruel, his current right hand in the Chamber of Deputies, said that “both Juntos por el Cambio and Frente de Todos recite the same model, except that one does it with bad banners and the other with good ones.”

Several polls have indicated that the libertarian could take more than 20 percent of the vote in the PASO presidential primaries scheduled for August 13 as Argentines turn away from traditional parties amid soaring inflation and economic turmoil.

Asked for his opinion of President Alberto Fernández’s government, the economist described it as a “disaster.”

“It [the government] is, since the return of democracy [in 1983], almost as bad as that of [former president Raúl] Alfonsín. They are neck and neck,” he declared.

Milei also lashed out at Vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who criticised the libertarian’s proposed policy of dollarisation and branded him as a “disciple” of former economy minister Domingo Cavallo.

“In the end, CFK and Juntos por el Cambio, when it comes to stealing from good Argentines, they are the same. They even repeat the same lies,” he wrote in a post on Twitter.