• New Government: Alberto Fernández will reform justice and defend Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, will today receive an extensive assignment of powers by Parliament, after a harsh debate in the Chamber of Deputies in which the opposition denounced the danger of the debated law, which will be approved in the Senate without difficulties.

The Law of Social Solidarity and Productive Reactivation in the Framework of Public Emergency, includes 84 articles that empower the Government to decide on key issues in which Congress usually intervenes : from a 30% tax to foreign currency expenditures to heavy taxes on agricultural exports, through a reduction in the amount spent on pensions. It is estimated that the extra tax burden will be 2% of GDP.

"The dictatorship is authorized for six months," said opposition deputy Elisa Carrió. "They come to steal from the field as they always stole, to keep the laboratories corporation and the industrial corporation."

"Every time power was accumulated discretionally, we ended up badly. There is no crisis similar to that of 2002 nor the negative numbers for such a project with 11 delegations of powers assigned to the Executive. It is a huge setback to imagine that the crisis is only resolved with extraordinary powers "criticized Mario Negri, head of the Together for Change bench, who went down to the premises to discuss the law once the ruling party achieved the quorum to start the session.

Máximo Kirchner, son of the vice president and spokesperson for Peronism in the Chamber of Deputies, recalled the failure of the previous president, Mauricio Macri, in the fight against inflation: "Superpower is to think that inflation was resolved with a snap of fingers. Those they are the ones who think they have super powers. Beyond the verbiage and tones, numbers are numbers. "

The session, which began on Thursday afternoon, ended at 10 am today, Friday. The bill was approved by 134 votes to 110 and will be converted into law this afternoon in the Senate.

"This is a tool that will allow the president to quickly find mechanisms to improve minimum retirements, which are extremely low," said today the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa. The minimum pension in Argentina is 14,000 pesos (about 155 euros). Fernández announced that these pensions will receive an extra bonus of 5,000 pesos (about 55 euros) in January and February.

With annual inflation above 55%, the "retirement mobility" law saw increases that were close to that percentage. The figure was impossible to assume for the coffers of the State, so the Fernández Government chose to put it on hold, strengthen minimum pensions and harm those who earn higher figures. In the next 180 days a new formula for updating pensions will be discussed .

A controversial aspect of the approved bill is that it excluded from the suspension of "retirement mobility" the 4,938 retirees who receive an average credit of 210,000 pesos (2,330 euros) and a maximum credit that can double that figure. These are the so-called "life annuities" for former presidents, vice presidents, members of the Supreme Court and other former officials of the judiciary.

Peronism is accustomed to governing with emergency laws that grant it powers of Parliament . Carlos Menem did it between 1989 and 1999, and Eduardo Duhalde and Néstor and Cristina Kirchner between 2002 and 2015. Macri repealed the law in 2016 and ruled without super powers .

During the last days the opposition managed to renounce an article that gave it discretionary power over a large number of decentralized agencies and entities of the State, to which it could intervene and reformulate at pleasure. What remains in the law is the intervention of a series of regulators of public services and the freezing of electricity and gas rates for 180 days.

The 30% surcharge for expenses in foreign currency has a full impact, among others, on air tickets, although an exception was included in the final leg of the debate, according to the TN news channel: those airlines with a business name in the country and that sell their tickets in pesos will be exempt. This would benefit, for example, Aerolineas Argentinas on its route from Buenos Aires to Madrid and in principle it would harm Iberia and Air Europa. There are doubts, however, about how that exception will remain in the law after its passage through the Senate today.

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  • Senate
  • Mauricio Macri
  • Iberia
  • Argentina
  • Alberto Fernandez

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