Argentina’s President Javier Milei pledged Sunday to speed up his libertarian reforms following a heavy loss in the Buenos Aires provincial elections.
The 54-year-old populist leader has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023.
He acknowledged his party's "clear defeat" by the center-left Peronist movement in the elections to the legislature of Buenos Aires province, the country's economic powerhouse.
A deflated-sounding Milei admitted to unspecified "mistakes" which he vowed to "correct" but said he would not be swayed "one millimeter" from his reform agenda.
"We will deepen and accelerate it," he said at a muted election night event in the resort of Mar del Plata, where he took the stage in silence, in marked contrast to his usual dramatic entrance to rock music.
With 91% of the votes counted, the center-left Fuerza Patria coalition had taken over 47% of the vote against nearly 34% for Milei's ruling La Libertad Avanza (LLA), official results showed.
Buenos Aires's votes are telling as a bellwether for Argentina. The province contributes more than 30% of Argentina's GDP and accounts for 40% of all eligible voters.
The 13-point gap between Milei's party and the left was far greater than opinion polls had predicted.
Turnout in the election was high, at around 63%.
The result poses major concerns for Milei, coming just six weeks before the midterm elections.
Some members of his party downplayed the extent of the defeat, pointing out that the LLA had nonetheless increased its share of legislators in Buenos Aires.
The government went into the election under a cloud following a corruption scandal at the National Disability Agency involving the president's sister and right-hand woman, Karina Milei.
In a sign of the anger among many Argentines over the affair, Milei and his sister were pelted with stones on the campaign trail outside Buenos Aires in late August, with skirmishes breaking out among supporters and opponents.
The ruling party's election drubbing comes three days after Milei suffered a major setback when Congress overturned his veto of a law increasing allowances for disabled people.
On the economic front, the self-described "anarcho-capitalist" is struggling also, despite success in fighting inflation and in erasing a fiscal deficit.
Last week, his government began selling treasury dollars to stem the depreciation of the local currency, the peso, which had been accelerating in recent weeks despite high interest rates.
"We must learn from this (election defeat)," LLA candidate Diego Valenzuela told AFP, claiming that the result "was due to not engaging in economic populism, which is new in Argentina."
His remarks were aimed at the Peronists, accused by Milei of leading South America's second-biggest economy to ruin through excessive spending and protectionism.
