by “Uhh” was heard in the Chamber of Deputies every time the board showed that another article of the Omnibus Law had been rejected. Were seven red plates in total until the reporting member of La Libertad Avanza, Gabriel Bornoroni, requested the fourth intermission that ended up selling the fate of the project: returns to the plenary session of committees, without a period for new treatment.
In the middle, the accusations of “traitors” and reproaches not only between the Executive and the dialoguist governors and deputies, but also within the benches, even the libertarian official party. A escalation in political tension of which the consequences are not yet known.
President Javier Milei, from Israel, did not take long to get into the ring. “The caste stood against the change that we Argentines voted for at the polls“he tweeted minutes after the vote.
“The forces of heaven” promised to sound the warning. “Betrayal pays dearly and La Libertad Avanza is not going to allow the governors extort the people to maintain their privileges,” they said from the official account of Milei’s party.
The return of the project to committee occurs after four debate sessions and even after the general approval of the law by 144 votes in favor against 109 rejections last Friday. After more than a month of negotiations, the original project of 664 articles had been reduced to just over 300.
This Tuesday, in the chamber they only voted in particular up to article 6. Among those points, the Government had approved 6 emergencies: economic, financial, security, tariffs, energy and administrative. The prosecutor, provisional, defense and social had already been left along the way.
However, at the time of approving the bases of those legislative powers delegated to the President – in article 4 – the setbacks began to the point that The security emergency, for example, remained a merely “symbolic” or “declarative” issue.because later the section that specified what this power was going to consist of (“strengthen the actions of the federal security forces” in different orders) was rejected. An empty shell.
But they also denied the President the power to “regulate and reorder the energy sector” and to “modify, unify or eliminate trusts or trust funds” that were key funds for the governors.
On this last point, even Carolina Píparo, an LLA ally, voted against a modification that had been made at the request of Nicolás Massot.
“They gave powers over allocations for trust funds and Massot proposed exempting two. Milei was emphatically against this type of positive discrimination, either it is for everyone or for no one,” he said in his environment.
“The only ones who kept our word were the PRO governors and deputies,” said a yellow legislator.
Once article 5 arrived – that of the Administrative Reform of the State – they rejected six sections from the Government and only approved one: to implement improvements in the professionalization of the career of agents of the national administration. “On top of that, what was left standing is nonsense”complained to Clarion a libertarian representative.
The votes against came from a sector of the UCR, a part of Miguel Pichetto’s We Make the Federal Coalition; and part of Federal Innovation, from the governors of Salta, Río Negro, Neuquén and Misiones.
On top of that, the debate on the privatization chapter was coming soon, which in terms of dissent, it was known, was more generalized.
“We ask the ruling party to have some flexibility, they love to lose continue…Try to see how to receive some proposals and win. “You don’t have to lose, you have to win,” Pichetto warned.
The difficulties in the negotiations were seen from day one and had a first crystallization in the signing of the opinion, when the official project was imposed with 55 signatures, but 34 of them in dissentwith differences in more than 100 articles.
Trust was not built, the atomization of the opposition did not help and neither did the official stubbornness. There was always a threat, attributed to presidential advisor Santiago Caputo, that if they did not approve the delegations or privatizations as LLA demanded, they would withdraw the project. All or nothing.
Today that warning came true after the fourth intermission in which the block leaders met with the president of the Chamber, Martín Menem, and with Caputo. They made an evaluation in which they considered that what had been approved “no longer served them.”
“No rush. We always said the same thing. The law as we want or there is no law“, they pointed out from the Executive. They even consider that they are not the ones who need the law to govern. “The law solves long-term problems, there is no rush,” they point out.
But the plus is that the ruling party assures that the dialogue blocks “did not keep their word.” “If those who had said they were voting vote against you, imagine the rest,” said the head of the block, Oscar Zago, to explain the decision.
The dialogue blocks ensure the opposite: that thanks to them we had come this far. “They never understood that we are not responsible for gathering their votes. They came to the session without the votes. We warned them and did everything possible, we gave them options but the answer is ‘no’ to everything,” said a legislator. key to the negotiation.
The last attempt before the session had been by Minister Luis Caputo, who called several of the governors in person and asked them to vote on a favor. In exchange, he told them that he was going to make sure that the funds reached him somehow.
The leaders had been denouncing that the project was only for save national accounts and defund the provinces. That’s why they threatened to share the Country tax.
The governors asked him to make this commitment public, a concrete signal. “Because otherwise It’s like the story of the lying shepherd“said a deputy of the Cordoba president. But it did not happen.
