Milei promises good times lie ahead at La Libertad Avanza launch rally

President Javier Milei defended his government on Saturday, promising that “only good news” lies ahead for Argentina as his La Libertad Avanza party staged a key rally in Buenos Aires.

Milei, 53, vowed to deliver an “electoral landslide” in next year’s midterms in a speech to thousands of supporters in Parque Lezama, on the border of the San Telmo and La Boca neighbourhoods. 

Speaking just days after the INDEC national statistics bureau reported that poverty in Argentina reached 52.9 percent of the population in the first half of the year, the President brushed off criticism and vowed that good news lies just around the corner.

“From now on we are only going to have good news and in 2025 we are going to have an electoral landslide, the righteous will triumph and the populists will sink,” Milei told cheering supporters at the park, the site where he first launched his political career.

President Milei challenged criticism of his government, especially over rising poverty, which he attributed to his predecessors in office.

“Poverty is not generated from one day to the next, nor can it be eliminated from one day to the next,” he said, claiming that the government of former president Alberto Fernández was on its way to “leaving 95 percent of the population poor.”

He assured them that poverty had “begun to fall” in the “second quarter” of the year.

"In the first quarter poverty grew to 55 percent. But I want to say something to all these hypocritical sappy people. Poverty in the second quarter of the year was 51 percent – therefore, poverty has begun to fall in Argentina," he declared.

Saturday’s event served as the formal launch of Milei’s party as a national force. Authorities estimate that more than 5,000 people turned out for the rally, with buses of supporters arriving at the location from early in the afternoon.

La Libertad Avanza (LLA) is currently in a minority in both chambers of Congress. Milei will ask voters to hand him a stronger hand in the legislative elections set for December 2025.

Milei, who came to power in December and has enforced a strict austerity campaign in an attempt to reset the stuttering economy, described his administration as “the best government in history.”

He highlighted its success in lowering inflation from the monthly 25 percent when he took office to the four percent recorded last month. 

Milei heaped praise on his Economy Minister Luis Caputo, whom he declared to be “a colossus” to cheers from the crowd.

“It is not every day you can greet the best economy minister in history,” said the President.

There was also praise for other Cabinet members in attendance, including Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Defence Minister Luis Petri.

Argentina’s President also fired off repeated insults against journalists, complaining about their “monopoly of the microphones” and alleging he was the victim of a “media blackout.”

Dismissing criticism of his supporters, he told them: “You are not trolls at all, you are flesh and blood.” Milei described his backers as “free souls, heroic lions who woke up not to be sacrificed on the altar of damned social justice.”

He further rejected recent surveys showing that his popularity is on the wane, dismissing their authors as “liars of the caste who tell lying results depending on who pays them.”

Milei highlighted how they had predicted a win for his Peronist rival, Sergio Massa, in last year’s presidential election. 

The President was preceded onstage by his sister, presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei, the powerful official nicknamed “The Boss” who will preside over La Libertad Avanza nationwide.

"With La Libertad Avanza consolidated at the national level, we will be able to fill Congress with deputies and senators who defend the ideas of freedom," Karina told the crowd.

After her short speech, which highlighted her relative lack of experience onstage and in front of the cameras, her brother took to the stage dressed in a leather jacket. 

Dancing and singing to his signature song, ‘Panic Show’ by rock group La Renga, Milei asked supporters to help him “put an end to the caste once and for all.”

– TIMES/AFP/NA