'Propaganda machine': Argentina's newly elected President Javier Milei vows to privatise BBC in country

Argentina’s newly elected President Javier Milei has announced that he will privatise his country’s version of BBC to stop public television from becoming a “propaganda machine.” Milei, an extreme libertarian economist, won a landslide victory on Sunday following which he pledged to dismantle the “propaganda mechanism” of the Left. “There is no room for gradualism, there is no room for lukewarmness or half-measures. There is no way back,” he said in his victory speech. “We consider that Public TV has become a propaganda mechanism. I do not adhere to those practices of having a propaganda ministry. Public TV has to be privatised,” he added. Analysts say the main driver of Milei’s victory was voter anger at the status quo, rather than his personality or views against abortion, the Pope, or denying humans were behind climate change. His victory came against the backdrop of Argentina recording an annual inflation of 140 percent and poverty over 40 percent, the latest in a long line of recurrent crises in one of the world’s most unstable economies. Milei’s campaign focused on fixing the economy, dismantling the Central Bank, replacing the Argentine peso with the US dollar, slashing social subsidies and halving the number of government ministries. The wild-haired Milei, who often refers to himself as “the lion,” courted a rock-star persona, dressing up as his superhero alter-ego Captain Ancap – short for anarcho-capitalist – and waving around a live chainsaw to indicate cuts he wants to make to state spending. Just a day after winning the elections, Milei also promised to halt all public works and said that “those in progress” would be put out to tender. Milei said Monday that it could take between 18 and 24 months to bring Argentina’s rampant inflation under control, as he outlined his plans to reform the economy. With inputs from AFP