Doctors and nurses from Buenos Aires’ leading children’s hospital marched on Friday alongside university staff, in protest at President Javier Milei’s vetoes of funding increases for their sectors, part of his austerity drive.
After 21 months in office, Milei on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have increased the university budget to keep pace with inflation and offset wage arrears – a move he had already taken in October 2024.
He also blocked a law authorising transfers from the Treasury to provincial governments. That came just days after he summoned governors for dialogue after the ruling party’s heavy electoral defeat last Sunday in legislative elections in Buenos Aires Province, in which the opposition Peronist force triumphed.
In response to the vetoes, demonstrators backed by trade unions and left-wing movements gathered in Plaza de Mayo on Friday for a protest that coincided with a 24-hour strike at Garrahan Children’s Hospital and at state universities.
“The government has stirred up discontent across society. At the ballot box they sent a clear message that this austerity policy can’t go on,” said Esteban Algañaraz, 34, a hospital porter at the Garrahan, considered the nation’s leading paediatric institution.
He described earning a “miserable wage” of 700,000 pesos a month (around US$470 at the official rate), when the basic family food basket costs about US$785.
Affected sectors are preparing another protest next Wednesday, when the lower house Chamber of Deputies will debate whether to overturn Milei’s vetoes of the university funding law and of a law declaring a paediatric emergency at Garrahan hospital.
That would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, where the government is in the minority and lacks the numbers.
Last week Congress rejected one of Milei’s vetoes for the first time, striking down his move against a law that granted more funds to disability services – a sector shaken by corruption allegations involving his sister and presidential chief of staff, Karina Milei.
She has been summoned by Congress to answer accusations of alleged bribes and kickbacks in the purchase of medicines for the ANDIS national disability agency.
At Friday’s protest, numerous placards bore the phrase “three percent” – Karina’s alleged cut from contracts under investigation by the courts.
President Milei admitted a “clear defeat” in last Sunday’s elections but warned he would not change “a single millimetre” of his fiscal and monetary policy, despite market jitters over the peso being considered overvalued.
On Monday evening, he will present the 2026 budget bill in a nationwide broadcast address.
– TIMES/AFP
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