High stakes for Javier Milei as midterm elections loom in Argentina

String of scandals

But gaining enactment has proven difficult, arsenic a bid of high-level scandals has taken a toll connected the support ratings for some Milei and his party.

On October 6, for instance, a starring Milei-backed candidate, Jose Luis Espert, suspended his run aft helium was charged with wealth laundering.

Prosecutors accidental Espert accepted astatine slightest $200,000 from Federico Andres Machado, an Argentinian businessman who is being extradited to the US connected cause trafficking and fraud charges.

Until those allegations came to light, Espert had been a starring contender to correspond the state of Buenos Aires successful the Chamber of Deputies.

Milei has denounced the accusations arsenic a "malicious operation" to "smear" the candidate, and Espert himself has denied immoderate wrongdoing.

But Espert is not the lone fig successful Milei's interior ellipse to look controversy.

Protesters connected September 17 show an effigy of Javier Milei arsenic a king [Patricio A Cabezas/Al Jazeera]

A fewer weeks earlier, leaked audio captured Diego Spagnuolo, the erstwhile caput of Argentina’s National Disability Agency, accusing the president's sister, Karina Milei, of requesting kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies.

Milei, who appointed his sister arsenic secretary-general to the presidency, has likewise rejected those accusations.

He called the leaked audio portion of an “orchestrated and planned disinformation campaign” aimed astatine “maliciously influencing the electoral process”.

In the aftermath of the scandal, however, Argentina's Congress delivered high-profile rebukes to Milei's platform.

It overrode Milei's veto for the archetypal clip successful September to support disablement spending. Then, successful October, it rejected Milei's veto again to sphere increases to acquisition and healthcare funding.