2024-10-08 20:54:21
Argentine university students and professors demonstrate this Wednesday against the economic adjustment of the government of Javier Milei, determined to veto a law recently approved by Congress that seeks to improve the budget of high schools of study.
Hours before the call, scheduled for 5:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. GMT), bustling columns of students began to arrive at the railway terminals of the Argentine capital to go to the square in front of the National Congress, the epicenter of the protest that will be replicated in the main cities of the country.
The government described the march as “political” and the demands for teacher salary increases as “unjustified”, within the framework of an increasingly tense social scenario and a marked decline in the president’s popularity, according to polls.
– Supports –
The concentration, supported by unions and social organizations, focuses on a law approved on September 13 that increases the salaries of teachers and public university workers to counteract the impact of inflation of 236% year-on-year in August.
Milei threatened a “total veto” after approval by Congress. The president has until Thursday to reject the law.
The march wants to pressure Congress so that it does not ratify the eventual presidential veto.
The government called lawmakers “fiscal degenerates” for passing a law whose fiscal impact was estimated at 0.14% of the Gross Domestic Product, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“What we are against is Congress enacting laws that do not have an assigned budget item, that is, that cannot be financed,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on Monday.
In any case, the government does not seem to have the necessary support in Congress to leave the veto firm as it did with a bill that updated pensions to mitigate the loss of purchasing power due to inflation.
– «Future at risk» –
The police placed fences one hundred meters around Congress to prevent the passage of the protesters who around midday began to crowd against the iron structures guarded by hundreds of troops.
«There is a clear directive: do not surpass or try to enter Congress. When they do, the police react. Because we want order,” warned the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich.
“Without education I have no future,” read the sign of one of the young people who was heading to the vicinity of Congress in a column of hundreds of students from the public University of Lomas de Zamora, on the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires.
“Doctor graduated from the public university,” read the sign that another of the protesters was carrying on her back.
The organizers seek to repeat the massive university demonstration of April 23, the largest so far against a Milei policy, after which the government reinforced funds for infrastructure expenses and university hospitals.
Students and professors fear that the situation will affect the educational quality of the public university, the pride of Argentines and the parent company of five Nobel Prize winners, which concentrates 80% of higher education enrollment.
At the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires, students displayed a huge poster with the legend “Your future is at risk.”
The march also capitalizes on social discontent regarding the impact of the economic adjustment that led to a recession, with a GDP drop of 1.7% in the second quarter of the year compared to the first and a projected contraction of 3.8% for 2024. .
Poverty increased 11 percentage points in the first half of the Milei government and reached 53% of the population, the highest in more than two decades.
The president’s image is in decline. According to five surveys published by the newspaper Clarín in September, between 40 and 45% of the population approves of his management, six points less than in the August and July surveys.
© Agence France-Presse