The audacity of the reforms proposed by the Government makes observers wonder whether it will be able to sustain them over time. There is nothing that scares investments more than legal instability. In recent days Argentina is visited by dozens of envoys from companies and banks from countries interested in investing, who ask if the projects will be approved. But, more importantly, They are interested in legal and political sustainability over time that justifies any investment..
The Milei government is subjected to the same question asked to Macri between 2015 and 2019. Won’t a new government come in the future that will bring everything back? Already in 2017, Macri had admitted that, in the face of Peronism, the results achieved by his government would not last long. In 2019, when he lost power, he resigned: with this Peronism “kidnapped” by Cristina one cannot govern. And he couldn’t govern.
The projects bring the number of inherited emergencies from 9 to 11. Another sign of weakness is the state of exception, lasting two years, renewable for another two. That is, his entire term as president. This trend has been criticized by liberal thought on the right and left as an institutional poison. “The state of exception is today the normal structure of political power”, stated the philosopher Giorgio Agamben in 1996 (“Endless media: notes on politics”).
A Peronism in quarantine
Milei’s days are numbered to answer this conundrum. The possibility of winning a second symbolic run-off depends on two factors. One is How long will the Christian pandemic last?. The toxicity of Peronism in the face of public opinion is what allows it to advance over Congress. In Deputies Peronism obtained a unitary bloc of 101 seats. They are the first majority, but no one wants to take a photo with them. And even less so while Máximo Kirchner continues to talk as if he controls the sector. “What a favor he is doing us,” complain the Peronists in Congress, who see how Milei gains strength at the expense of their discredit.
In the Senate, Peronism is unlikely to come out of the 33. The anti-Cristina alliance put together by Juan Carlos Romero and Humberto Schiavoni (former senator) evicted Peronism from the Chamber and kept all the positions on the board of directors. Nor can the Peronists emerge from the quarantine in which the Fernández government left them. As long as this pandemic lasts, they will be victims of Milei who vampirizes them for her own benefit. Theirs will last as long as the discredit of that opposition lasts.
The 23 who break the polarization
The second factor is the “balkanization” of deputies in many blocs, which are also fragile. In the last legislature the opposition was divided into an informal interbloc which met on key occasions in the headquarters of Mario Negri of the radical bloc. At critical moments there were up to 7 bloc leaders who went to the Sanhedrin and could fight or agree, but they came out with a moderately unified position. That informal unit no longer exists and facilitates Milei’s authoritarian push.
Make up for this void the establishment of the block of 23 deputies chaired by Miguel Pichetto and which unites Cambio Federal, Hacemos (Schiatism) and the Civic Coalition, led by Elisa Carrió. It is the 5th block by number of seats and includes legislators with experience and strategic clarity such as Pichetto, Nicolás Massot, Emilio Monzó, Maxi Ferraro, Juan Manuel López, Paula Olivetto, Ricardo López Murphy, Florencio Randazzo, Margarita Stolbizer.
This block of stars is already the cornerstone of every decision. For an opposition “No”, Peronism and the left together have 106 votes. If we add these 23, we already reach 129, constituting the quorum necessary to meet and vote. Oppositely, the ruling party has 78 between La Libertad Avanza and the PRO, and can add 35 from the UCR. If the 23 “galacticos” are added to the 113, they reach 136 and overcome the opposition of Peronism.
The political depth of the names that make up the We Make Federal Coalition block becomes the reference for every debate that arises in the Chamber. The populist manual that Milei applies to build muscles makes him do without politics. But with this bloc of 23, the polarization with which they try to question Congress is broken.
Arguing everything to gain power
The government insists on justifying its programmatic impulses with the intention of embodying an air of change. The intention is contradicted by the lack of power to undertake reforms due to the mismanagement of the electoral consensus (29%) in the first round, when the new Congress was formed. Without a party, without its own team, without legislators or governors. Milei embodies the leadership of a compound minority and inorganic sectorhalf, of young people outraged by what was there and who are now outraged by what is there, and another half that expresses that 15% that the conservative right has historically had in Argentina, where Milei essentially comes from and in shape.
The two shots – DNU and omnibus law – were fired as if the government had a majority of the electorate – the imaginary 55% of the ballot – a legislative majority, a party leadership and a territorial anchor. This is what he is trying to bring to Congress and to a sector of opinion to a state of permanent assembly to discuss everything, at the same time. She moves as if she has power, seeking the power she doesn’t have.
Divide more than unite
The breadth and density of the initiatives that the DNU and the omnibus law have carried out lack the soul of any project, which is to seek unity to build the majority that supports them. The tactic is the opposite, a DNU and an omnibus law to divide. Putting people in crowd situations is a way to achieve other goals, which he claims he can only see himself, because others “don’t see it”as the screen that his followers make viral says.
It is an animal reflex of the politician who tries to get out of a problem, as mayors who try to reset their management by changing the direction of traffic on the streets know this. Everyone goes crazy and escapes reality by discussing trivialities. Mixing initiatives without weighing priorities also weakens the operational intent of the two packages. He mixes projects that require different majorities, thus preventing their joint treatment. We talk about withholding and money laundering, but we don’t say anything about income tax. It includes malice that manifests the weakness of origin.
Article 654, one of the last of the omnibus law, seeks to ratify DNU 70/23. In the case of.
The constituent temptation
The barrage has violence, but not force. If he had had the majority of votes that the reformist boasts, he would have directly asked for a constitutional reform to give greater weight to his claim. In political matters, the menu includes projects that demolish the institutions that included, with constitutional status, the 1994 reform, such as political parties. Demolishing the progress of that Constitution has been one of the objectives of Peronism over the last twenty years. One of them is to weaken the federal district, which in this reform would reduce the number of national deputies.
Updating the number of seats per district increases the possibilities of Peronism, such as election by constituency, which would make regional chiefdoms eternal. In fact, an article of the omnibus law, 298, takes away from the provinces the control over oil concessions imposed by the Constitution in art. 124 and calls it the “short law” of hydrocarbons. The governor of Neuquén, Rolando Figueroa, warned the nation’s energy secretary, Eduardo Rodríguez Chirillo, on Thursday. He apologized and promised to correct what he admits was a mistake.
CGT: Milei doesn’t comply
The first missiles will come from trade unionism, whose legal framework has been damaged in the DNU. This rule is a real demolition of the legal system of individual labor rights as we know it to date. Repeal Juan Perón’s legendary labor contract law and dismantle the web of laws and other regulations that have become a tangle protecting the power of union members over the past 70 years. Making the industry more flexible than ever before.
The main wound is the repeal of the so-called “solidarity contributions”, which force employees and companies to contribute not to unionized workers but to the entire paycheck. It is one of the most important boxes that panics and goes to Court. “No president has ever failed to respect what was agreed upon, from Alfonsín to Fernández, but this one does not.””. The CGT council met with Guillermo Francos, who closed something that they now do not respect. When they called him to complain, the Interior Minister said: “They spoke to me, but I’m not at the president’s desk.”
Source: Clarin
