Argentina’s libertarian presidential candidate, Javier Milei, has been pilloried by veterans of the Falklands war after he praised Margaret Thatcher as one of “the great leaders in the history of humanity” during the final electoral debate before next Sunday’s election. Milei – a self-described anarcho-capitalist – has frequently expressed admiration for Thatcher’s free-market policies. But she is still reviled in Argentina for ordering the sinking of the General Belgrano cruiser, killing 323 people on board, during the 1982 war with the UK over the Falkland islands, which Argentina claims as Islas Malvinas. Milei’s comments came in Sunday night’s debate, after his opponent, the Peronist candidate, Sergio Massa, challenged the eccentric economist over his enthusiasm for the Iron Lady. “You’ve said Thatcher is your idol – I invite people to look it up on Google – and you’ve come now to unsay things you said during your campaign, that’s why people are scared of you.” Massa corralled Milei. “But now you need to state clearly, is Thatcher your idol, yes or no?” Milei fell for the bait. “There have been great leaders in the history of humanity, Mrs Thatcher was one of them,” said Milei, adding that Thatcher irritated Massa because he had leftist sympathies. “Thatcher had a significant role in the fall of the Berlin Wall and it seems that its fall and the crushing of the left bothers you. That’s your problem.” Milei argued that dismissing Thatcher’s “greatness” was a fallacy tantamount to denying the brilliance of the French soccer player Kylian Mbappé because he scored three goals against Argentina’s winning team in the 2022 World Cup final. Massa retorted: “Thatcher is an enemy of Argentina yesterday, today and always and our [war] heroes are absolutely non-negotiable. No matter how important a figure Thatcher seems to you, to me she isn’t.” Milei’s comparison of a football match with a war in which 649 Argentinians died prompted a furious response from those who fought in the 1982 conflict. “The worst part was the total banalization of the issue,” the veteran Ernesto Alonso told the C5N news channel on Monday. “Thatcher was the historic enemy of Argentina and always will be, she took the decision to torpedo the cruiser Belgrano when it was outside the exclusion zone. Almost half of Argentina’s Malvinas casualties died on that ship.” Milei was widely considered the frontrunner before last month’s first round, although he unexpectedly finished second with 29.9% of votes to Massa’s 36.6%. Over the weekend he was endorsed in an open letter signed by nine former Spanish and Latin American presidents, including Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, the Peruvian Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, Andrés Pastrana and Iván Duque of Colombia and Mexico’s Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. But dark clouds are gathering over Milei, who badly needed to emerge victorious from the debate, with various polls showing the two contenders running neck and neck ahead of the finish line this Sunday. Macri and former first-round electoral foe Patricia Bullrich were conspicuous in their absence from Sunday’s debate, after they were apparently disinvited by Milei amid reported friction between the nominal allies. Milei went on the defensive on Monday, claiming in a radio interview that Massa supporters had conspired to cough whenever it was his turn to speak. Milei has similar claims during TV interviews and in-person lectures. “Every time I went to talk, someone coughed. He [Massa] sought to destabilize me emotionally but he didn’t achieve it, even with the coughers,” Milei said. Coughs or no coughs, veterans of Argentina’s 1982 war are unlikely to forgive the ultra-libertarian candidate. “Milei is a creation of international rightwing squads who are spreading all over the world. Now they are coming for Argentina,” said Alonso.