Latest news with #political movement
National Post
17-07-2025
- Business
- National Post
J.D. Tuccille: The remarkable triumph of Javier Milei
It's possible that no politician has defied the expectations of the chattering class as successfully as has Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei. Expected to remain in political obscurity, he rose to lead a political movement. Anticipated to lose a presidential election to a candidate from the country's dominant authoritarian political party, he won. And predicted by a cabal of academic economists to lead Argentina to ruin with free-market policies, he instead turned around the long-suffering country, resulting in lower inflation and rapid economic growth. Article content Article content Argentines have decades of experience with making bad choices and suffering their consequences, but this time they may have broken that unfortunate pattern by electing leadership that wants the state to take a back seat to individuals and private effort. Article content Article content Article content Drawing on official data, Reuters reports that Argentina's 'economic activity rose 7.7 per cent in April compared with the same month last year.' That was higher than expected and a welcome addition to news that the economy had grown by 5.8 per cent during the full first quarter relative to the same quarter the previous year. Early numbers put Argentina's second-quarter growth at 7.6 per cent. By contrast, Canada's economy grew at an annual 2.2 percent in the first quarter and the U.S. economy shrank a bit. In equally encouraging news, Argentina's 'monthly inflation rate has fallen below two per cent for the first time in five years,' according to the Financial Times. That's still high in North American terms, but Argentina's governments have a history of wildly expanding the money supply to pay off debt and finance expenditures, resulting in inflation rates in the hundreds and even thousands per cent per year. Inflation slowed somewhat in recent years, but it was over 200 per cent in 2023 and Milei was elected on a promise to stabilize prices — even if it meant adopting the U.S. dollar as the country's official currency. Article content Article content Importantly, the poverty rate in Argentina has also fallen to 38.1 per cent of the population at the end of 2024 from 41.7 per cent when Milei took office. Again, that remains very high, but it's an improvement in a country where politicians have long seemed committed to keeping people poor and dependent on the state. Article content Article content This wasn't supposed to happen. In a November 2023 open letter, over 100 economists warned that Milei's economic 'proposals, rooted in the economy of laissez-faire and which include controversial ideas such as dollarization and significant reductions in public spending, are fraught with risks that make them potentially very harmful to the Argentine economy and people.' Article content The economists — including such academic luminaries as Thomas Piketty and Jayati Ghosh — warned of havoc if Milei implemented his free-market plans. Voters weren't impressed by the forecast of doom; they chose the self-described 'anarcho-capitalist' economist and his upstart political coalition over the standard-bearer of the dominant Justicialist Party.
Russia Today
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Russian-Armenian tycoon launches new movement from jail
Samvel Karapetyan, a jailed Russian-Armenian billionaire and critic of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has announced the creation of a new political movement. This comes as Pashinyan remains in a standoff with opposition protesters backed by the powerful church. In a statement sent through his lawyers on Monday, Karapetyan said his team would build a 'fundamentally new' political movement, but did not rule out working with like-minded groups. He added that he respects the groups that oppose Pashinyan's rule but stressed that he has his own vision for Armenia's future. 'We will go our own way, with our own team, but not excluding cooperation with political allies,' Karapetyan wrote, according to excerpts published by local media. He said his goal is to unite Armenians around 'fair and great objectives,' rejecting the 'black-and-white and other artificial divisions that these authorities have imposed on society, dividing and weakening the country.' He did not, however, provide further details on the movement's platform and ideology. Karapetyan, the owner of the Moscow-based Tashir Group conglomerate, was arrested in May on charges of publicly calling for the seizure of power. The charges stemmed from his public support of the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC). The AAC emerged as the key driver of protests against Pashinyan following his decision to hand over several border villages to Azerbaijan – which the prime minister defended as necessary to normalize relations with Baku. Many Armenians view the concession as a betrayal of national interests. As tensions escalated, the authorities arrested Karapetyan and several prominent clerics on coup-related charges. They also moved to nationalize Karapetyan's local energy company, and last week, an Armenian court ordered the detention of opposition lawmaker Artur Sarkisyan on accusations of conspiring to stage a violent coup. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Russia maintains contact with Armenia regarding Karapetyan's arrest. He added that while the turmoil is an internal matter for Armenia, Moscow wishes to see it as 'a prosperous and stable country that is friendly to Russia.'
