Argentina’s voters have taken a leap into the unknown after electing Javier Milei, a radical libertarian outsider, as president in the hope that his promise of shock therapy can cure its sickly economy.

Rightwing populists in the shape of Donald Trump and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni were quick to offer congratulations to Milei, the mop-haired television economist who beat economy minister Sergio Massa by a convincing 11 percentage points. But Argentines were already worrying about how the flamboyant first-term legislator might govern the deeply divided South American nation without a congressional majority.

Milei pledged in a burst of radio interviews on Monday to privatise national oil company YPF, state television and radio. “Everything which can be in private sector hands will be in private sector hands,” he vowed. He promised to visit the US and Israel in the three weeks before his inauguration, saying it would be a “spiritual” experience.