Test of the street, then of elected officials: Argentina’s parliament will continue ultraliberal President Javier Milli’s deregulatory reforms on Thursday, a project already heavily revised by an executive forced into a parliamentary compromise and dedicated to several days of debate.
After 12 hours of debate, the Chamber of Deputies suspended a day before a live debate on the text, which is fierce and controversial. A marathon session is organized over several days with around 200 speakers.
“The project is controversial but only for those who want to keep their privileges,” assured José Luis Espart, one of the deputies of the presidential party, La Libertad Avanza, which forms only the third party in parliament.
Outside, several thousand opponents of the reform demonstrated on Wednesday at calls from social movements and the radical left. Later in the day, some clashes pitted some demonstrators against police, who cleared roads near parliament and used tear gas, AFP noted.
However, the mobilization has been inconsistent with general strikes and demonstrations in several cities on January 24, a month and a half after Miley’s inauguration.
The package of reforms affected almost all areas from electoral system to education, culture to privatisation, criminal code, commercial, self-defence, fire fighting, divorce, status of football clubs. After weeks of negotiations, including a series of crucial tax reforms and a controversial change to pension indexation, it was cut in half.
– What superpowers? –
Points of contention remain: privatization – oil giant YPF is excluded but 40 companies remain targeted – and the temporary delegation of increased powers to the executive in the name of the “economic crisis” and social.
Deputies were initially expected to hold a so-called “general” vote on the principle of the law, perhaps on Thursday, before examining the articles in detail.
The scenario remains uncertain: Deputies of the centrist opposition are willing to give the executive “opportunities to govern”, but remain reluctant about the delegation of power, its duration, its extension. For Martin Tetaz, “it will be difficult to approve the third part of the project” because it is and will require changes in its block.
In left-wing opposition, MP Hugo Yassky urged the House not to vote on the delegation of power, a “blank check to the admirers of Vox, Bolsonaro, Trump and the entire far-right of the world”.
“Today, politics has an opportunity to begin to repair the damage done to the Argentine people,” President Millay said on Social Network X.
– Stagflation –
Milli, a 53-year-old economist who defines himself as an “anarcho-capitalist”, has shaken up Argentine politics in two years of rapid rise – deputy in 2021 then president in November 2023 – with a program of deregulation and “cutting”. “enemy state” and expensive.
“There is no Plan B” for fiscal austerity, he reiterated in recent days, at 211% for the year 2023, to stabilize an economy strangled by debt and chronic inflation.
In fact, his strongest measures to date are already affecting the daily lives of millions of Argentines: the devaluation of the peso by more than 50% in December, the “free” price – which the previous government tried to regulate as best it could. – and an end to subsidies for transport, especially energy.
First solid impact: Record monthly inflation of 25% in December. Mr Millay himself warned that things would “get worse” initially, with “stagflation” (a stagnation of activity combined with high inflation) in 2024.
Kristalina Georgieva, director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said on Wednesday that the government was “taking bold steps to restore macroeconomic stability and remove constraints to growth.”
The IMF, which had expected 2.8% growth in Argentina in 2024, has, however, revised its forecast and projects a slowdown in Latin America’s 3rd economy, -2.8%, under the impact of austerity measures. According to the fund, the country will be the only country in the G20 in recession in 2024, before a +5% recovery in 2025.
Published at 3:41 am on February 1, AFP
