Javier Milei proposes a new ‘social pact’ to rebuild Argentina – Technologist

Just shy of three months after taking office, Argentina’s far-right libertarian president, Javier Milei, has continued to baffle observers, both in terms of the style and substance of his policies. On the eve of the country’s new parliamentary session, for which his address to Congress was eagerly awaited, he had already shaken up conventions: Changing the speech’s schedule, for prime-time on Friday evening, rather than at midday; standing behind a lectern rather than sitting down, etc. These details led the local media to publish many stories reporting a set-up that copied the one used for the US’s famous State of the Union address.

As a warning to Milei, and fed by the growing number of protests and strikes against the government’s austerity policy, protestors packed Buenos Aires’ Plaza del Congreso on this unprecedented Friday night. The crowd greeted the president with shouts of “hypocrite,” “the motherland is not for sale,” “Milei, you scum, you’re the dictatorship.”

Before the country’s congress – in which his party is very clearly in the minority, with just 38 MPs and 7 senators – and without refraining from his usual provocations, Milei began with a detailed and gloomy assessment of the situation in the country, where the cumulative annual inflation rate has reached 254.2 %, according to the national statistics institute. As he had done in his inaugural speech on December 10, 2023, he insisted that Argentine had received “the worst legacy in history” from previous governments.

‘Thirst for change’

It didn’t matter that the legislators and governors present in the chamber had not supported his “Omnibus Law,” which outlined a vast libertarian reform program for the country. According to Milei, Argentina “woke up” to elect “a president who may not have the power of politics, but who has the power of the conviction and support of millions of Argentinians.”

Seeking to distance himself from his audience, he asserted: “We don’t live on politics. We don’t live for politics. Far from it. All we have is a thirst for change.” According to Lara Goyburu, a political scientist at the University of Buenos Aires, “he spoke directly to the 56% of the electorate who supported him in the second round [of the presidential election], and showed that he was a president [who is] ready to fight all battle. After 82 days in power, he hasn’t budged one iota from his campaign proposals.”

The Argentinian president outlined some of the measures he intended to take against “the caste”: Ending public funding for political parties, instituting term limits for workers’ union authorities, abolishing special pension schemes for presidents and vice-presidents, and making it a “crime against humanity” for elected officials or civil servants to approve budget deficits that are financed by issuing money, to name but a few.

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