in Buenos Aires, a demonstration against Javier Milei leaves several injured, including deputies

INTERNATIONAL – Tear gas, water cannons and burning cars. Impressive clashes broke out this Wednesday, June 12 in Buenos Aires between police and anti-Milei demonstrators. At the origin of the demonstration, a controversial reform by the ultraliberal Argentine President Javier Milei, approved by the Senate this Thursday morning.

The presidency welcomed the“historic approval” of this flagship law on the deregulation of the economy, known as “omnibus law”calling it “the most ambitious legislative reform of the last 40 years”. This is the first time in six months in power that Javier Milei has obtained support from Parliament, his party being in the minority.

As you can see in our video above, It was on the sidelines of discussions in the Senate this Wednesday that the riots began, leaving around ten people injured. Demonstrators attempted to overwhelm the security cordon set up around the Chamber of Deputies, cars were set on fire, and the police responded to the throwing of projectiles with tense shots of rubber bullets and water hoses.

Seven people, including five opposition MPs, were treated in hospital, according to the Health Ministry, after being sprayed with tear gas. Dozens of people were also treated on site after inhaling the fumes. On social media, numerous videos showed protesters chanting anti-Milei slogans and banging pots and pans.

At least ten people were arrested and nine police officers were injured, a spokesperson for the Security Ministry told AFP. As night fell, the police finished regaining control of the streets. The Argentine presidency, for its part, denounced “terrorist groups who, using sticks, stones and even grenades, attempted to carry out a coup d’état”.

Deregulatory reforms that worry the Argentines

“ We can’t believe that in Argentina we are discussing a law that will take us back 100 years “, summarized, among the demonstrators, Fabio Nunez, a 55-year-old lawyer. The text, definitively approved by the upper house after some marginal modifications, will return to the hands of the Chamber of Deputies which will decide on its final adoption.

Among the concessions of the executive, the number of privatizations, reduced from around forty in the initial version to less than 10, including that still on the table of the public airline Aerolineas Argentinas. The project to make the labor market more flexible was also debated in the Senate. Opposition senator Mariano Recalde estimated that this bill, labor reforms in particular, “takes us back to the last century when the employee had no rights”.

The law is “an accelerator, a catalyst for the recovery of the economic situation”, for his part pleaded 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 “shock therapy” of promised austerity – the “largest fiscal adjustment in human history” as Javier Milei likes to repeat – has already produced effects since December: brutal devaluation of the peso (54%), liberalized prices and rents, end of transport and energy subsidies, freezing of public works, all-out budget cuts, etc.

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