Argentina's Milei likens election to fall of Berlin Wall in inauguration speech

Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, has vowed to lead his country out of decades of "decadence and decline" but said the economic crisis would intensify over the coming months, as a "who's who" of the global far right assembled in Buenos Aires to celebrate the radical libertarian's inauguration.

- Tom Phillips, Buenos Aires

Addressing tens of thousands of supporters outside Argentina's turquoise-domed neoclassical congress, Milei - a mercurial former TV celebrity known as El Loco or the Madman - compared his shock election to the start of the Soviet Union's collapse.

"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, promising to "fight tooth and nail" to drag his country into "a new era of peace and prosperity".

He said, however, that Argentina - where annual inflation is expected to hit 200% this year and 40% of citizens live in poverty - faced an “emergency” situation . “The challenge before us is titanic … I’d rather tell you an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie,” he said.

Milei’s speech had strong echoes of Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech in which the American tycoon vowed to end an age of “American carnage”, crime and poverty and return power to “the people”. “Argentina has become a bloodbath,” Milei said, vowing to fi ght the drug traffi ckers who had “hijacked” the streets of its biggest cities.

He had been formally sworn in as Argentina’s next leader moments before in the presence of far-right associates including Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro , Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orbán , the leader of Chile ’s Republican party, José Antonio Kast , and the leader of Spain’s Vox party, Santiago Abascal . “The right is rising not only in Europe but all around the world!” Orbán tweeted from Argentina’s capital .