Argentine President hit with stones during corruption protest

Argentinian President Javier Milei was pelted with stones while campaigning for an upcoming election amid an alleged corruption scandal. While riding in the back of a pickup truck on Wednesday to greet supporters in the city of Lomas de Zamora, near Buenos Aires, Milei was greeted with hostility from demonstrators.

Those protesting his administration’s alleged corruption scandal threw plants, rocks and bottles at the President’s motorcade and personal vehicle. The right-wing leader, who is campaigning for October mid-term elections, was whisked away from the scene by his security detail and sustained no injuries. Once he left, fights erupted between supporters and opponents of the libertarian leader.

One woman, who supports Milei, sustained rib injuries and was taken away by ambulance. A retiree described Lomas de Zamora as an opposition stronghold. ‘Milei came to provoke. And well, he had to leave, as was fitting,’ he said. The tense brawl arose amid a scandal in Argentina over alleged corruption at the public disability agency involving Milei’s highly influential sister and right-hand woman, Karina Milei.

In Argentina, leaked audio recordings in which a former government official is heard discussing alleged bribes linked to purchasing medicine for people with disabilities have been circulating. In the recordings, the former head of the disability agency, Diego Spagnuolo claimed that Karina Milei pocketed funds destined for people with disabilities. Minutes before greeting supporters the president had addressed the scandal. ‘Everything (Spagnuolo) says is a lie,’ he told reporters in Lomas de Zamora before the protests erupted, adding: ‘We are going to bring him to justice and prove he lied.’

Ariel Ferrari, a communications expert who supported the president, said he came to ‘defend the ideas of Javier Milei…to free Latin America and the entire world from socialist, Marxist ideas which never worked.’ The incident underscored the potentially damaging nature of the scandal for Milei in the run-up to the legislative elections. The vote will be the first major test of his support since the libertarian economist took office in December 2023 on a promise to revive Argentina’s ailing economy.

He won the race to be Argentina’s president in what was been described as a ‘political earthquake’. Milei ran under his own coalition – Freedom Advances – which he founded in 2021 aged 50 with the slogan: ‘I didn’t come here to lead lambs but to awaken lions.’ He denounced his more conventional election rivals as ‘useless, parasitic politicians who have never worked,’ as well as rallying against the ‘caste’ of the political elite who he calls ‘robbers’ taking money out of voters’ pockets.

In that vein, Milei prefers to call himself an anarcho-capitalist – which means he would like to rip up as much government intervention in people’s lives as he can and leave it all to the free market. So far, 54-year-old has managed to bring down stubbornly high inflation and produce a budget surplus through steep cuts to public spending, including on people with disabilities.