Argentinian Congress Deputy Chamber session discussing the Omnibus Law. Photo: Argentinian Congress Deputy Chamber Office.
The Chamber of Deputies of Argentina has returned the controversial omnibus law back to committee, following deputies’ approval of six of the articles when the session was adjourned due to the lack of consensus between the ruling party and its allies.
The omnibus law, a set of ultra-neoliberal economic reforms, was sent back for debate this Tuesday, February 6, meaning the project promoted by the government of far-right president Javier Milei will have to be discussed again.
The decision was adopted because the ruling party did not have the votes to approve key articles of the law, such as the privatization of public companies, the reforms to the debt support law, and the strengthening of penalties to restrict civil liberties, like the right to protest.
The package of laws, which at the time was labeled as the omnibus law, and was later reduced from 650 articles to 350, was approved last week, on Friday, in the general parliamentary vote. In addition, this Tuesday, the article-by-article analysis began, point by point, by reviewing each of the axes to determine whether or not this package of laws was going to finally be approved.
It was initially approved to give further consolidatory powers to the president, but over the course of the afternoon, the tone changed, and rejections and denials began to pile up, until at one point one of the deputies, one of the bloc presidents, called for a recess.
“What La Libertad Avanza did with its allies was to collapse the law, they collapsed it,” said Legislator Diego Julio, who is part of the UniĂłn por la Patria bloc. “Laws are connections, and so we must generate dialogue, and, above all, we must speak with those who are to be affected by these laws.”
The legislator of the Left Workers’ Front, Alejandro Vilca, declared: “The distortion has been coming from the national government for a long time, and not just by trying to choke off resources to many rural provinces, which almost 80% or more of its resources depend on co-participation. Now it takes us to this situation, to try to bring us to [Milei’s] knees so that he can be given delegations of special powers. A shame.”
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“We had condemned this situation, but also that the entire set of this omnibus law was not something isolated, it had other ramifications,” he added. “One of the measures that Caputo launched was an inflationary evaluation to crush the salaries and incomes of retirees and workers. Another was the DNU, another was Patricia Bullrich’s protocols to prevent the right to protest, and this omnibus law was the union of all that.”
President Javier Milei is currently on a state visit to the Israeli settler entity, and over the course of the day and the following morning, he received the news that his package of laws has made no progress and that it will have to be discussed again after a long day of deliberation.
In Argentina, the people and workers took to the streets to celebrate this defeat of the ruling party. Local journalists noted that the position of some ministers is now being called into question, since they had to work and push to get some votes, but had failed to follow through.
(Telesur)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
