(Xinhua/Martín Zabala)
BUENOS AIRES. The Argentine Government is willing to “confrontation”, following the Senate’s decision to reject a presidential decree considered key by the Executive, the Presidency spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, stated this Friday.
“On March 1, President Javier Milei offered an alternative to the leadership: agreement or confrontation. We prefer an agreement, but we are also willing to confront confrontation,” Adorni said at a press conference. The Senate rejected on Thursday, after several hours of debate, the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), formally called “Bases for the Reconstruction of the Argentine Economy”, with 42 votes against, 25 in favor and four abstentions, while A similar process should be carried out shortly in the Chamber of Deputies.
The DNU was signed by Milei on December 20 and is still valid, since according to local legislation, for its cancellation both chambers of Congress must vote against, while approval in one of them is sufficient for keep it standing.
The norm that the Senate rejected proposes changes in laws such as the rental of real estate, the supply of products, the one that regulates the work of supermarkets, the use and ownership of land, as well as modifications in an industrial promotion regime and another from the commercial field.
It also indicates a reform of the labor regime, promotes the privatization of public companies, modifies the Civil and Commercial Code, and changes the regulation that governs prepaid medicine plans and social works of unions.
Adorni said in this regard that the rejection of the DNU in the Senate represents a “bad indication about the will of some actors to advance the May Pact”, recently proposed by the Executive to the provincial governors.
The May Pact constitutes a founding agreement aimed at establishing 10 State policies that allow the construction of a new economic order, by rescuing Argentina from the path of failure and reinserting it on the necessary path to once again be a world power, according to the Government.
“The zero deficit is non-negotiable, the reduction in inflation is non-negotiable and the sanitation of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic is non-negotiable. We are going to achieve it with or without the collaboration of those who yesterday (Thursday) tried once again to obstruct the path of change. To all Argentines (…) patience and trust,” said Adorni.
The official added that the majority in the Senate “has a stale policy that is not up to the task and that turns its back (…) on the changes that society wants for this country.”
Thursday’s session in the Senate was called by the head of the upper house and vice president of the Nation, Victoria Villarruel, following a request from Unión por la Patria (UxP), the first minority in the chamber (33 out of 72 senators) and which was Government between 2019 and 2023 with Alberto Fernández in the Presidency.
The 25 votes that the ruling party obtained came from seven of its own legislators, seven contributed by Together for Change (center-right), most of the Radical Civic Union (UCR, social democracy, which has 13 seats) and provincial fronts.
The norm must now be considered by the Chamber of Deputies, where according to local press estimates, 110 members out of a total of 257 have already anticipated its rejection.
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