Deputies in the lower house Chamber of Deputies upheld President Javier Milei's veto of their bill to increase pensions on Wednesday against a backdrop of clashes between protesters and security forces outside Congress.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered to protest Milei's veto, with police firing pepper spray and rubber bullets at one group – including pensioners – who angrily broke down a barrier after the vote.
Twelve people were injured and three arrested, the TN television network reported. No official confirmation of those figures was immediately available, though government sources said one other arrest had been made.
Milei last week blocked an 8.1-percent pension increase initially approved by both houses of Congress, which aimed to help cushion retirees hit by annual inflation of almost 240 percent.
The President claimed the measure was fiscally irresponsible, writing in his decree that it was "manifestly in violation of the current legal framework as it does not consider the fiscal impact of the measure nor determine the source of its financing."
After a bitter debate that lasted more than four hours on Wednesday afternoon, Milei prevailed, with 153 deputies voting against the president's veto – short of the two-thirds majority needed to override it.
Eighty-seven lawmakers voted in favour and eight abstained.
"Today, 87 heroes slammed the brakes on the fiscal degenerates who tried to destroy the fiscal surplus that Argentines worked so hard to achieve," Milei cheered in a post on the X social network.
"Evidently politicians still think that we Argentines are fools and do not see their malicious manoeuvres to overturn a government that for the first time chooses to tell Argentines an uncomfortable truth instead of a comfortable lie," he wrote.
Milei's La Libertad Avanza’s party is in a minority in both houses of Congress and divided by tensions. But several lawmakers with the centrist Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), the driving force behind the law to increase pensions, announced Tuesday that they had changed their position and are now in favour of the veto.
The announcement came after five UCR deputies met with President Milei at the Casa Rosada on Tuesday.
"We cannot pass laws without knowing how they will be paid for. We cannot spend what we do not have, there is no money," said ruling party lawmaker Juliana Santillán in her speech to the chamber, citing one of Milei’s catchphrases.
UCR deputy Rodrigo de Loredo, who voted to override the veto, said the ruling party line was a “fallacious argument” and that retirees deserved the modest raise, which would buy around a dozen empanadas.
The bill struck down by Milei, which had been previously approved by a majority in both houses, granted an increase of 8.1 percent to retirees. The minimum pension is equivalent to US$230 per month.
'Betrayed'
Several pensioners were among those who clashed with police or were detained.
Patricia de Luca, a psychologist who has just retired, said she felt "betrayed" by lawmakers and "hopeless".
Since taking office in December, the La Libertad Avanza leader has applied a drastic austerity programme in a bid to rein in chronic inflation and decades of government overspending.
Maintaining fiscal balance is his top priority and in the first half of the year, Argentina recorded its first surplus since 2008 thanks to massive cuts in government spending.
Inflation for August stood at 4.2 percent, the fourth consecutive month under five percent and a massive drop from the 25.5 percent recorded in December.
However year-on-year inflation was still sky-high at 236.7 percent.
Critics say the steep drop in inflation and other apparent economic wins have come at the cost of the poor and working classes, and due to a strangling of the economy.
Milei's veto particularly sparked anger as it came after he decreed an increase of US$102 million in the budget of the newly renamed SIDE state intelligence agency – which amounts to a 700 percent increase – without requiring justification of expenditure.
Argentina’s economy is currently in recession, with 7.7 percent unemployment. More than half of the population lives in poverty, according to private estimates, which Milei himself has described as accurate.
Hundreds of police were deployed around Congress ahead of the debate, after pensioners, opposition parties, social movements, and the CGT, the country's main labour union umbrella grouping, said they would demonstrate.
"It's an excessive security operation, it seems like we're coming to a war, not a parliamentary session," said Peronist lawmaker Cecilia Moreau as she entered Congress mid-morning.
Milei's controversial economic reforms have sparked violent protests this year, with police firing teargas at stone-throwing demonstrators who have overturned and set cars on fire.
Peronist lawmaker Victoria Tolosa Paz criticised Milei for striking down the bill. The Unión por la Patria deputy called for pensioners to be “part of the economic recovery" and "not left on the poverty line."
She also criticised the UCR deputies who shifted their stance after talks with Milei, who usually prefers to stay out of congressional politics.
"In 45 days nothing has happened to make the Radicals change their position,” said Tolosa Paz.
“You have to ask them what motivates them today to change a political position,” she added.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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