Omnibus law: struggles and uncertainty after the new package of measures proposed by Milei

LOOK: Argentina: the largest labor union calls for a general strike against Milei’s measures

The new government’s initiatives have been presented through a decree of necessity and urgency (DNU) and a more ambitious bill presented on Wednesday.

The decree effectively deregulates the Argentine economy and, among other things, incorporates measures to make the labor market more flexible and affects health care services provided by unions. The decree will come into force this Friday, although it can be repealed by Congress.

As for the package of bills, known as the ‘omnibus law’, it is a reform that proposes extensive changes to the tax system, the electoral law and the management of the country’s public debt, in addition to declaring an economic emergency. The latter implies the delegation of part of the legislative powers to the Executive until the end of 2025, with the option of extending it for two more years.

The bill, which has 664 articles that include the elimination of labor standards, the privatization of state companies and the modification of the Civil and Commercial Code, must be approved by legislators in both chambers of Congress, where Milei’s coalition has a small minority.

Anger and uncertainty

Along with the announcements, the discontent that has been felt with mobilizations over the last few days in Buenos Aires and other cities in Argentina has grown.

This Thursday, several social organizations cut off part of the traffic in the municipality of La Matanza, the most populated and poorest in the province of Buenos Aires, during a protest against Milei’s economic measures.

One of the most important repercussions came in the afternoon, when the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the main labor union in Argentina, called a general strike on January 24 in rejection of the decree and the package of bills of the new government.

“On the 24th we are going to carry out a strike with mobilization in Congress to support those deputies and senators who tell us that this cannot happen in Argentina,” said the general secretary of the CGT, Héctor Daer, who said that his organization agreed to meet with the rest of the labor confederations in Argentina to articulate joint measures.

Daer considered that the decree and the bills would concentrate “the sum of public power” in the president.

“Unions and various social movements have reacted angrily. They have been days of many mobilizations. For a government that is less than 20 days old, there is a fairly significant level of social unrest. The climate that is breathed is very vertigo because the majority of society is seeing a hyperactive president trying to promote his radical agenda,” Juan Negri, an Argentine political scientist at the Torcuato di Tella University, tells El Comercio.

It emphasizes that groups, individuals and voters analyze the situation based on their preferences. “For many, this is a new government that has come to do what had to be done and they see it with great optimism, and there are also sectors that are practically up in arms and consider this to be a drama. I see that the majority of society sees the situation with a lot of vertigo, a little anguish and a lot of attention,” she points out.

Meanwhile, the different political actors who oppose Milei’s DNU and the public emergency macro-project continue to criticize the measures, and complaints and appeals for protection against both regulations continue to reach the Argentine courts.

Open discussion

For now, Milei’s measures are just announcements. Ignacio Zuleta, journalist and columnist for the newspaper “Clarín”, points out that this is a government that has not yet begun to govern and that is looking for the allies it needs in Congress to approve its initiatives.

“His government, which has a very limited electoral base, obtained 29% of the votes, has 41 deputies and 7 senators in a Congress of more than 300 representatives. Milei seeks to generate a debate on all topics. He seeks to establish some political support that will allow him to begin governing because she has been there for two weeks and has not yet appointed her own cabinet, there are lack of officials, there are lack of functions to be defined. “I would take this as an attempt to reorganize forces, to see if she can find allies to give her the power that the president does not have,” she explains.

He adds that the fact that it proposes very different initiatives, structural reforms and superficial reforms, means that all bills are analyzed as a whole. “It has fiscal and electoral measures, even how judges should dress, how deputies are elected. They are initiatives of a very different nature, a general judgment cannot be made. What the president or the government is trying to seek is the support of some sector that is overwhelmingly in favor of him, something that has not happened so far.

Regarding the declaration of a public emergency and the granting of extraordinary powers to the president, Zuleta recalls that it is a measure “that all weak governments have appealed to.” “In Argentina, the government of Alberto Fernández had nine emergencies. There are very few governments in the world that do not govern with exceptional measures. Governing with executive orders seeks to compensate for the inefficiency of the State in resolving the demands of society,” he adds.