On the eve of a massive protest, Milei asks Argentines for more sacrifice to reach the “promised land”

2024-04-23 02:06:23

“This economic miracle responds to the chainsaw.” Argentine President Javier Milei celebrated with biblical phrases that the first quarter of his administration has produced a fiscal surplus of 0.2% of GDPI on the basis of what he himself calls the greatest economic adjustment in Argentine history. The far-right made a fiery defense of his measures a few hours before a great mobilization of all the universities in the country in repudiation of the budget cut and the policies that, the rectors of all the educational institutions jointly warned, lead to the collapse of educational institutions.

“It is simply a world-class feat”said Milei about his shock program that affects all levels of education, science and culture. Her speech coincided with the announcement of the demolition of the National Film Institute (INCA). Capitalist anarcho invoked the “forces of heaven”, cited in the Old Testament, as guardians of adjustment. He in turn highlighted the capacity for tolerance of an overwhelmed society and said that the weight of adjustment falls on “the politicians” and the “corrupt.” “There is no alternative but to surrender at the feet of a people who have decided to abandon slavery and take the path to the promised land.”

The opposition immediately described the presidential diagnosis as fanciful. The modest surplus, it was recalled, is the result of layoffs in the State, the freezing of pensions, the withdrawal of resources from the provinces, payments owed to energy and gas companies, the lack of financing for universities, the paralysis of public works and the recessive situation with an inflation of 60% in four months that also impacts the fall in imports in general.

The president refrained from alluding to the massive protest expected this Tuesday. However, he stressed his determination not to increase public spending. “The era of the so-called present state is over.”

While Milei addressed the Argentines, the National Interuniversity Council (CIN) ratified the march in defense of the public university and, at the same time, demanded an increase in the budget for operating expenses of the study houses and the granting of scholarships student salaries, as well as the updating of teaching salaries, which in four months lost 36% of their purchasing power, and the reactivation of research policies and the financing of completely paralyzed works. According to the portal Online politicsthe university rectors received “desperate calls” from the authorities to suspend the demonstration.

Official rejection

Faced with the negative, the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, He considered that the protest was meaningless because the Government granted a 70% increase in the amounts of money for operation. “The march is something encouraged by politics”, said. The university authorities recalled that inflation of 230% annually has devoured that sum. However, Adorni disqualified the demonstration. “We consider it dangerous that from a desk they encourage these things to happen in an unnatural way. We are far from wanting to allow universities to be used by the politicians in power for their own benefit.” He in turn assured that six out of every 10 students abandon their courses in the first year.

Between 1971 and 2023, the number of national universities increased substantially. Argentina has one university for every 350,000 inhabitants, twice as many as in Brazil and Colombia and three times as many as in Mexico. Since the country recovered democratic institutions, the number of students has increased from 318,000 to 2,714,277 in 2022. More than 80% of them study careers in public establishments. 20% do it in private universities. In 2023, and despite the effects of a major economic and social crisis, the poorest students outnumbered the richest for the first time in public faculties that for the president are places of “indoctrination” Marxist type. In its classrooms, 91,484 foreigners study, from whom the Government wants to charge a fee and, in this way, break a tradition of free education of more than a century.

For Luciana Vázquez, newspaper columnist The nationMilei “has just created another corporate monster, ‘the public university’, and the response it receives is as corporate as its attack. In that context, this Tuesday’s university march is predictable and, furthermore, for the Government, self-inflicted. The public university is one of the sacred cows of Argentinaan untouchable taboo capable of uniting politics and a large part of society transversally, for better and for worse.