Argentina | First vote in favor of President Milei’s deregulatory reforms

(Buenos Aires) Argentine deputies gave a first green light, in principle, to President Javier Milei’s package of ultraliberal measures on Tuesday morning, at the end of a marathon session which continues with a chapter by chapter debate.

After more than 20 hours of debate, the basic law obtained 142 votes for, 106 against and five abstentions. This is a decision “in general”, before a so-called “in particular” vote on each of the articles submitted to the Lower House.

The vote concerns some 230 articles, instead of the more than 600 initial ones of the so-called “omnibus” law, with caveats made on the privatization of public companies – 11 planned, including Aerolineas Argentinas, instead of 44 at the start – or the flexibilisation of labor law, in a lighter version.

The reinstatement of income tax brackets, which the previous center-left government had abolished, as well as a battery of tax advantages, also feature in the bill, which leaves aside controversial societal aspects of the text debated in February, like divorce reform.

Despite the government’s optimism, the vote is not guaranteed, in a hemicycle where Milei’s libertarian party is only the third group (38 deputies out of 257), and despite agreements made with right-wing blocs.

And it would only constitute a first step before the Senate, where the arithmetic is even more delicate for the presidential party.

To date, the reforms Milei, president since December, have suffered two setbacks in Parliament: in February when deputies forced the referral to committees of the omnibus law. Then in March, when the Senate rejected another part, the “Decree of Necessity and Emergency”, a megadecree published at the start of his presidency and to this day partially in force.

But the promised “shock therapy” of austerity is indeed in place, between brutal devaluation of the peso (+50%), liberation of prices and rents, end of subsidies for transport, energy, freezing of public worksites, etc.

A demonstration near Parliament, called by social movements and the radical left, continued until late Monday night, but without incident, unlike the tensions and clashes of the February session.