“The session is adjourned,” announced the president of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, Martín Menem, on February 6.
There was first a murmur in the room.
Then timid applause.
At the end, louder applause from the opposition.
After 27 days of debate, legislators had not reached an agreement to approve the
omnibus law
promoted by President Javier Milei to reform the State.
The project, which entered Congress with 664 articles and lost almost half in the discussion, fell at that moment.
The Executive had called extraordinary legislative sessions to deal with the initiative quickly, but there was no time: the deadline ended this Wednesday and the law is back at the starting point.
Milei's reaction came from Israel.
He had begun an international tour that would take him to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Pope Francis.
From the other side of the world, he launched a series of angry messages on social media.
“Come in and see the enemies of a better Argentina,” he wrote in capital letters about the legislators who had voted against his law;
He also shared a list made by another user with the name, photo and party of those deputies.
Later, he confessed to journalists at a press conference that he gave “the order to lift the project” when legislators began to “dismember” his project.
“I request (...) that the matter be returned to committee,” Oscar Zago, the president of the La Libertad Avanza bench in Congress, requested on the premises after, supposedly, receiving Milei's order.
Zago said that they knew that “there were differences” with other blocks, but that they did not expect an “ambush.”
The Government accused the opponents of not responding to “what the people voted for” and assured that they will continue with their program “with or without the support of the political leadership.”
Federico Sturzenegger, considered one of the authors of the initiative, proposed “impoverishing” the “interest groups” to advance the reforms that the Executive intends.
And Luis Caputo, the Minister of Economy, downplayed “the drama”: “It does not affect our economic program in the slightest.”
The State reform initiative, which aims to fundamentally change the political, economic and social structure of Argentina, was sent to Congress the last week of December.
The Government named it the Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines and the rest, an
omnibus law
due to the breadth and variety of issues it addresses.
It arrived at the plenary session of commissions with 664 articles ranging from the reform of the political system or the control of social protests to the authorization of the resale of tickets to sporting events.
The treatment began on Tuesday, January 9, and although the Government conveyed that the content “is not negotiated,” the project began to lose articles at that time.
The legislators signed a majority opinion, although with dissent, two weeks later.
The televisions broadcast it live.
The procedure normally goes unnoticed on the path of the laws to Parliament, but this time it had the Argentines hooked until after one in the morning.
Time was already running against the Government.
The Executive had called extraordinary sessions from December 26 to January 31 and had included 11 topics that Congress had to discuss.
The period had to be extended until February 15, but none of the points presented by the Executive were approved within the period that ended this Wednesday.
A report from the NGO Legislative Directory indicates that the approval rate of the laws discussed in extraordinary sessions in the last two terms, that of the conservative Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and that of the Peronist Alberto Fernández (2019-2023), was of the 41%.
Fernández, for example, called at the beginning of his last year as president extraordinary sessions to discuss thirty laws, but he was only able to gather enough deputies
in extremis
to carry out the first and only session before the legislative year began.
The treatment of the Milei
omnibus bill
finally began inside the premises on Wednesday, January 31, while outside political parties and left-wing organizations protested against an initiative that they consider “attacks achievements” achieved.
The security forces, deployed by Minister Patricia Bullrich as part of her action protocol against street demonstrations, confronted the protesters and repressed them for three nights.
It was the hottest week so far of the summer, the first heat wave of the year.
On Friday, lawmakers generally approved the law.
It was Milei's first victory in Congress, where she only has 38 deputies of the 257. The initiative had 144 positive votes and 109 negative votes.
Support came from the PRO, the party that brought the conservative Mauricio Macri to the Presidency in 2015, from the social democratic Radical Civic Union, from Peronism and from some legislators from regional forces;
The rejection came mainly from Peronism of Unión por la Patria and the left.
The project had, however, lost half of the original articles.
The most controversial points, such as the delegation of legislative powers, which Milei intends to be for up to four years, and the privatization of public companies would also be submitted, one by one, to a second vote the following Tuesday.
But that day the rejection of articles was much higher than expected and the Government decided to return the project to discussion in committees.
“The session is adjourned,” said Martín Menem.
The question that arose then was whether the ruling party knew that with its decision the law was returning to square one, at the beginning of the marathon debate that kept Argentines entertained during the summer recess.
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