Sebastian Fest Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Updated Saturday, February 3, 2024-19:10
Presidency Milei promises results in 15 years after the first brakes: "Your children are going to live wonderfully well"
Mandate The Government of Javier Milei lightens the 'omnibus law' to seek its approval in Congress
It was already early this Saturday morning and a large group of police officers continued controlling streets in the vicinity of Congress, in the center of Buenos Aires. It was the end of three days of
extreme tensions in Argentine politics
, the closing of a week that brought success to President Javier Milei with the approval of the omnibus law, although the opposition had partially scrapped it. A week that demonstrated, once again, that politics in Argentina is resolved in the offices, but also in the streets.
"The country is not for sale!" chanted a thin group of protesters. 10 meters away, a passerby was talking to himself, almost shouting: "What do you blame Milei for, if she still hasn't done anything? Don't you remember
Alberto Fernández
?"
Everything happened in the midst of devastating temperatures, 30 degrees and high humidity at night after a day in which the wind chill was well above 40. And it will continue to be so for the next two weeks. After approving the Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines by 144 votes in favor and 109 against - from Kirchnerism and the hard left -, the Chamber of Deputies
will debate the articles of the law on Tuesday
. Once this step is passed, the text will go to the Senate. If it is approved, and the signs are favorable in that sense, the rookie Milei, with only 38 deputies out of 257 and seven senators in a Chamber of 72, will have scored
an indisputable success
.
"No government in the 40 years of Argentine democracy has carried out a reform of this depth," highlighted
Rodrigo de Loredo
, parliamentary spokesman for the Radical Civic Union (UCR), a social democratic party that governed with
Raúl Alfonsín
and
Fernando de la Rúa
and It was part of
Mauricio Macri
's coalition
. Criticism of the UCR for having supported the law has been strong, but De Loredo knows that UCR voters overwhelmingly gave their vote to Milei in the second electoral round in November to block the way for the Peronist Sergio Massa. Blocking Milei's government was not an option. "We approve what is necessary for governability, we reject what is harmful to the republic!", summarizes De Loredo.
This rejection of "what is harmful" extended to other parliamentary groups, such as Macri's PRO, and a diverse alliance of moderate Peronists and social democrats. The sum of these three groups allowed Milei to approve a law that lost a lot in the parliamentary process, but remains a powerful instrument of reform.
"We support the law because it is a step towards transformation and change, which is what the people voted for,"
Daiana Fernández Molero
, PRO deputy, told EL MUNDO. "We believe that we had to guarantee the government a toolbox so that it could govern after the social and economic crisis left by
Kirchnerism
. And in the negotiation we greatly improved the law."
The original 664 articles of the law
were less than half complete
. The
tax reform
and the moratorium, as well as the electoral reform,
were erased from the law ; The
list of companies to be privatized
was reduced
- Aerolíneas Argentinas remains, but YPF was removed; the closure of cultural institutions was stopped; the open bar for foreigners to buy land; the weakening of environmental controls and the forest fire law; as well as the reforms to the fishing law that left Argentine fisheries at the mercy of competition from China, Taiwan and Spain, among other countries. The superpowers Milei requested were also severely curtailed.
Even so, the combination of the law with the vast decree of necessity and urgency (DNU) that was approved in December gives Milei a series of tools of notable scope.
Another thing is that the president knows how to use them, warns analyst
Martín Rodríguez Yebra
in
La Nación
: "In that sea of opponents that Milei describes as 'the caste', perplexity reigns. They deal with a foreign body. Those who extend their hand to him To help, they often bite it away."
The president "indulges in overacting audacity as a way to make up for his lack of deputies and senators.
He believes in a direct link with society, without intermediaries
."
That direct link is on social networks. Milei does not hold public events, never in democratic history has a president's voice been heard as little as that of the libertarian. To
find
out what he thinks
you have to go to the social network
the vote in particular, to advance to the Senate.
The next steps of the
omnibus law
will find Milei between Israel and the Vatican, where he will visit
Pope Francis
. Until recently they hated each other, today they get together and prepare a photo of harmony. And Milei is accused of not knowing how to do politics. The truth is that he sent to Congress a law that was a mixed bag, something never seen before, and he is close to taking a law that, combined with the DNU, gives him a margin of action far above what professional politicians would have expected a couple of months ago. With an extra addition: seven years ago, the Argentine Congress was attacked with 14 tons of stones by hard-left organizations. Mauricio Macri governed, who did not know how to handle the matter and never recovered from that impact. Milei, aware of this, exacerbated the
cultural battle
and, led by his former rival and now Minister of Security,
Patricia Bullrich
, deployed a shocking security operation so that the axis of politics was in Congress, and not in the streets.