The Argentine Congress is ready to debate the national refoundation proposed by President Javier Milei.
After a month of negotiations, the deputies will discuss this Wednesday the megalaw that the president presented on December 28 with 664 articles, among which he sought emergency legislative powers, the power to sell state companies and even the modification of the electoral system .
The project has remained at less than 400 points while the Government seeks a consensus that, at the end of Tuesday, was not assured.
Milei needs at least 129 deputies of the 257 that make up the lower house of Congress to appear for the debate to enable it.
With only 38 seats of its own, the ruling party is the largest minority in deputies, and has spent the last two weeks looking for ways to convince what it calls the “dialogue opposition”—the PRO of former conservative president Mauricio Macri, the center-right Radical Civic Union ( UCR), and a broad block of federal forces and other minority groups—to guarantee a quorum.
The 99 deputies of hegemonic Peronism, the majority of the chamber, are flatly opposed to the project, but the session would be guaranteed by the presence of the 37 deputies of the PRO, the 34 of the UCR and the 29 that make up the alliance We Make the Federal Coalition (HCF).
Added to the 38 ruling parties, the session will begin with 132 seats beyond the Peronists or the left (with only five seats) who will vote against the project.
The blocks that will guarantee the session have confirmed their presence in Congress this Tuesday.
Only the PRO, however, has guaranteed that it will “support everything” the project.
“On our part, the quorum and the vote in general are guaranteed,” said the head of the block, Cristian Ritondo, on Tuesday afternoon after the last meeting of his team.
Rodrigo de Loredo, head of the UCR block, stated that his block will also accompany the vote “despite the disorganization with which the Executive faced the treatment” and “the grievances expressed.”
We will provide the tools so that a government that is just beginning can carry out its management plan.
We demand a reasonable session in your procedure.
Roman circuses, no,” he wrote on Tuesday morning on his social networks after the last meeting of his deputies.
The session, initially called for this Tuesday, stalled last week, while the Government negotiated concessions on some points of the law and Milei distributed grievances to opponents on social networks and reported to the press.
The reform of the system that measures pension increases and the increase in taxes on regional exports ended up putting the Government at odds with the majority of congressmen and governors whom the Government hoped to convince.
Late Friday, after the government fired a minister who allegedly leaked to the press that Milei was threatening governors with cutting off federal funds and “leaving them penniless” for opposing export duties, the government decided delete the fiscal chapter of the law, which included withholdings, the reform of pension increases, the flexibility of money laundering or the forgiveness of default interest.
Since mid-January, the Government affirms that it has not negotiated the content of this law, but has been giving in to its loneliness in Congress.
Milei no longer claims up to four years of special powers that allow him to govern by decree, now he only asks for two.
He also accepted the “errors” in the writing of the Security chapter, in which an article proposed controlling meetings of more than three people in public, and has eliminated the oil company YPF from the list of the 41 state companies that it intends to privatize.
Now there are 37 left, with three others, such as Banco Nación, the electric power generator Nucleoeléctrica and the satellite telecommunications company ARSAT open only to partial capitalization.
He, too, will not seek to reform the electoral system.
Milei has remained publicly silent about the negotiation, but has been active on social media.
On Monday night, while the Government continued negotiating, the president showed his opinion with a
retweet
to a senator from the Buenos Aires legislature who called the opposition an “extortion block” and accused them of wanting to “continue living off politics.” ”.
This Wednesday, deputy Nicolás Massot, a former member of the PRO and today part of the HCF alliance, responded.
“The only thing the Government wants is to build an enemy,” said Massot in a radio interview in which he assured that Milei “has no interest in this law” and that he seeks “legitimacy in the conflict.”
The head of his block, Miguel Ángel Pichetto, later gave up.
“We must make an effort so that the law is passed and the Government has instruments that the President considers important,” he said, and asked the Government to sit down and talk with the provincial governors.
“When you talk about taking everything away from them, you are talking about people who are going to suffer,” he complained to Milei.
The law has been a headache for the center-right opposition, which has preferred Milei's disagreements to standing with Peronism in the face of Milei's proposal for radical change.
Peronism denounces that the treatment of the law, which was reviewed and approved in specialized commissions last week, was full of "obscurities and lack of transparency."
“None of the national deputies know what the text that they will actually want to approve will be,” said the leader of the Peronist bench, Germán Martínez, this Tuesday.
According to Martínez, the text of the law that will be voted on had modifications after it was approved last Wednesday morning.
The suspicion was later confirmed by an HCF deputy, who confirmed last Thursday that he had been invited to meetings far from Congress, in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta.
“I went to one of the meetings, when I saw who was there and what they were doing, I left,” he said.
“We meet with the authorities of the Chamber, we do not touch opinions, nor are we interested in improving the opinion.
For us, that instance is already closed and we are not going to go to any type of meeting other than with the authorities of the Chamber.”
The debate is scheduled for 10 a.m. this Wednesday in Buenos Aires.
It will be marathon: the deputies will discuss point by point the law that aims to modify a good part of the political, economic and social structure of the country.
Analysts expect at least 40 hours of debate.
The result is in the air.
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