EXPERT COMMENT
Milei will be competitive against an unpopular incumbent. Should he win, his policies could create unprecedented upheaval.
Javier Milei is leading polls in the run up to Argentina's first-round presidential elections on 22 October. An economist and former television commentator who served one term in congress, Milei calls himself an anarcho-capitalist and radical libertarian.
He has promised to trash Argentina's currency, the peso, in favour of the US dollar, abolish the central bank and cut public spending by at least 15 per cent of GDP.
Should he win, his largely untested fringe economic ideas will run up against an Argentine state and society accustomed to public largesse via subsidies and generous (though chronically less-than-effective) social safety-net programmes.
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