Violent clashes between police and demonstrators in Buenos Aires on Wednesday punctuated the Senate debate on a package of reforms wanted by ultraliberal President Javier Milei, AFP journalists noted.
The violence began when demonstrators attempted to overwhelm the security cordon set up around the Chamber of Deputies, where the so-called “omnibus” law must return if senators approve it.
Seven people, including five deputies, were treated in hospital, according to the Health Ministry, after being sprayed with tear gas.
Cars were set on fire and police responded to the projectiles with tense shots of rubber bullets and water hoses.
At least seven demonstrators were arrested, AFP noted. When contacted, the police did not give figures on the number of injured or people arrested.
Senators have been debating since Wednesday morning the new version of the Milei government’s flagship law, rejected in its original form of 600 articles, and adopted with major changes in 238 articles by the Chamber of Deputies in April.
Concessions
Among the concessions of an executive that has become more pragmatic over the months: the number of privatizations, reduced from around forty in the initial version to less than ten, including that still on the table of the public airline Aerolineas Argentinas.
The project to make the labor market more flexible is also debated by senators. And a tax reform, initially part of the omnibus law, was separated to be discussed separately, in the same session.
The law is “an accelerator, a catalyst for the recovery of the economic situation,” argued Economy Minister Luis Caputo on Wednesday, urging Parliament to approve it.
But, guarding against a possible rejection, he affirmed that the vote or not of the law “will not change the fact that this country will recover anyway, because this government will not change course. The macroeconomic order will continue. »
Because beyond the legislative tribulations, the promised “shock therapy” of austerity – the “largest budgetary adjustment in the history of humanity” as Mr. Milei likes to repeat – has indeed had an impact since December, between brutal devaluation of the peso (54%), liberalized prices and rents, end of transport and energy subsidies, freezing of public construction sites, all-out budget cuts, etc.
The president regularly trumpets that inflation is “dominated”, with a continuous deceleration for five months: from 25% monthly to 8.8% in April. And a budget has a surplus in the first quarter, unprecedented in 16 years.
In return, austerity strangles consumption, economic activity collapses, and recession sets in, with a contraction of -5.3% of the economy in the first quarter. With no imminent signs of rebound.
And above all “from the IMF to foreign investors, many actors affirm that, for the proposal [de Milei] to be credible, we need laws passed in Parliament, agreements, a more or less functional State,” estimates Ivan Schuliaquer, political scientist at the University of San Martin.
But six months after his accession to the presidency, Javier Milei has not yet had any of them approved in Parliament, the victim of contrary arithmetic: his small party, Libertad Avanza, is only the third force in the House of deputies, and in the Senate there are only seven parliamentarians out of 72.
In addition to the forced referral to committees of the “omnibus” law, the Senate in March rejected the “decree of necessity and emergency”, a mega decree published at the start of its presidency and to date partially in force.