Lawmakers in the lower house Chamber of Deputies began debate Wednesday on whether to overturn President Javier Milei's veto of a bill to increase pensions, amid heavy security due to a planned mass opposition protest.
Milei, a budget-slashing libertarian, last week blocked an 8.1-percent pensions increase approved by both houses of Congress, which aimed to help cushion retirees against annual inflation exceeding 250 percent.
The minimum pension currently stands at around US$230 a month. In his decree, Milei claimed the measure 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."
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.
Critics say a 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.
Hundreds of police were deployed around Congress ahead of a protest by pensioners, opposition parties, social movements, and the CGT, the country's main labour union umbrella grouping, in rejection of the veto.
"It's an excessive security operation, it seems like we're coming to a war, not a parliamentary session," said leftist lawmaker Cecilia Moreau as she entered Congress ahead of the debate.
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.
"We assume that acts of violence are being planned... and in light of this, a special security operation will be carried out. Attacking Congress is attacking democracy," Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni said Tuesday.
Congress can overturn Milei's veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, where the ruling party is in the minority, and divided.
However, 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.
Midday on Wednesday, deputies from the Innovación Federal caucus, who answer to provincial governors, announced they would abstain from the vote, indicating they would not overturn the veto.
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.
Peronist lawmaker Victoria Tolosa Paz criticised the Milei administration on Wednesday for its blocking of the increase for pensioners.
The Unión por la Patria deputy underlined the importance of "pensioners being part of an economic recovery" and "not leaving them on the poverty line."
"We need them to start to recover so that they can improve their levels of consumption, living standards, payment of services, food and medicines," she said in an interview with Radio Perfil.
"In the context of the debate in Congress over Javier Milei's veto of the pension reform, the deputy of Unión por la Patria spoke to the press and referred to the vote of the radical bloc:
"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.”
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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