Argentines give to the president a television blackout while presenting his 2025 spending plan on national television

▲ Argentine President Javier Milei arrives at the headquarters of the Legislative Branch in Buenos Aires.Photo Ap

Stella Calloni

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, September 17, 2024, p. 25

Buenos Aires, in front of a half-empty legislature due to the absence of opposition members, and using a national broadcast – with the lowest audience recorded in similar events – the far-right president Javier Milei read out the budget project for 2025. He came dressed in the presidential sash and holding the cane, as when he took office, which is unusual, while in several neighborhoods residents banged their empty pots and pans.

Of the 257 deputies and 71 senators in both chambers, only 130 attended; that is, one third. Entire opposition benches were absent, which was to be expected, but not even the allied legislators attended in their entirety.said the Argentine Politics portal.

Not all cabinet ministers were present either, and the lack of interest from the general public was added to this. “According to Argentina’s audience measurement company, the rating On El Trece, the main open television channel, the ratings plummeted from 5 to 0.4 points as soon as Milei started speaking. An extreme case was that of Channel 9, which dropped to zero points.”

The president did not provide any important figures to define the economy he projects, but in this case he warned the provincial governments that they will have to subtract 60 billion dollars from their total expenditure, when the situation is already unlivable on a social scale and the national government still owes the money from this year’s revenue sharing.

Milei added that, with this new request, the provinces can reduce spending to 25 points of GDP next year. He even referred to the fact that public service rates are given awaywhen they soared to such high figures that they quintupled normal spending, and announced that in 2025 they will increase even more.

“The provincial leaders defined that the figure of 60 billion dollars in adjustments that the president is asking for is ‘absurd’. They agreed in stating that, with the ‘federalization’ of the obligations and the cut in national transfers, a reduction of that magnitude would be equivalent to ‘closing’ the State,” the newspaper reported. Page/12.

Among other words, Milei said that To manage is to reduce the State in order to enlarge societyand said that he will veto all projects that threaten fiscal balance, referring to the Executive’s rejection of the pension reform that increased pension benefits. Any expense that is created and does not explain from which existing budget item it will come will be vetoed..

Teacher Incentive Fund Suspended

He announced that only half of the budget needed by public universities would be allocated, and he proposed the suspension of the Teacher Incentive Fund, which has been in effect since January, which will deepen the conflict not only in this case with professors and students, but also with the allied blocs of the Radical Civic Union (UCR): Encuentro Federal and the Civic Coalition.

The polling firm Zuban Córdoba maintains that the lack of credibility of the population in the Executive is deepening every day, which in many aspects reaches important figures of up to 70 percent in the rejection of the government, and that Milei believed that he would be heard by the entire country in his message to Congress, but ended up receiving the harshest message: the television blackout, which achieved the lowest audience for a presidential speech.

Now, the governors, even those close to him, have made their voices of protest heard and several of them consider that the national government is only interested in raising the money to pay the International Monetary Fund for the refinanced debt left by Milei’s partner, former President Mauricio Macri, when his four-year term ended in 2019.

Meanwhile, the UCR convention decided to suspend the five deputies who voted in favor of Milei’s veto against the retirement mobility law. This led to a crisis in the party, while the president decided to invite the 87 legislators of La Libertad Avanza, Propuesta Republicana (Pro), led by Macri, and the five radicals, three of whom voted in favor of the veto and two who abstained, to eat a barbecue at the presidential residence to celebrate that they had achieved a victory about retirees.

This is happening when there are several open cases against the brutal repression that left wounded and injured among the elderly who were protesting last Wednesday, events for which responsibility is attributed to the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich.

The lawsuit filed by attorney Gregorio Dalbón, representing the family of the 10-year-old girl, Fabricia, who was attacked by a police officer who threw a new, enhanced pepper spray in her eyes and who suffered a severe case of asphyxiation, was also made public.