Has the rock star president played his final encore?

Despite facing election defeats and scandal, Javier Milei took to an arena stage in Buenos Aires for a concert, telling his fans 'I'm human'

- By Facundo Iglesia BUENOS AIRES and Tom Phillips

Argentina's “rock star president” Javier Milei has been struggling to get much satisfaction of late, as his pledge to lead the country into a new era of prosperity foundered amid a wave of economic strife, scandal and public discontent. But last Monday night the South American populist and former frontman in a Rolling Stones tribute band took to the stage in Buenos Aires hoping to sing his way out of the funk.

“Olé, olé, olé, olé! Milei! Milei!” thousands of diehard supporters chanted as the 54-year-old libertarian kicked off a concert at the city’s 15,000-seat Movistar Arena. Milei basked in the adulation, throwing his leather-clad arms into the air. “I’m human,” he told the packed stadium. “It might not seem like it, but I am.”

Milei won power almost two years ago, vowing to save his country’s notoriously haywire economy by “exterminating” inflation and taking a metaphorical chainsaw to state spending. “Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of a tragic era for the world, these elections represent a tipping point in our history,” he said as he took office in December 2023.

For a while Milei’s austerity campaign appeared to be working - for some people at least - with the president’s success in taming triple-digit inflation drawing international plaudits.