Javier Milei achieved a great legislative victory this Wednesday. With the vote of his own 38 deputies and the support of another 35 from Pro, the party of former president Mauricio Macri, the far-right narrowly saved in Congress his veto of a university financing law that provided more resources and a salary increase to the teachers. In this way, the norm, approved a month ago by a large opposition majority, was annulled. The Government added 84 votes in favor of the presidential veto, against 164 for the opposition to maintain the validity of the law, an insufficient number to reach two thirds of the 249 deputies present at the time of the vote. In addition to the Pro, Milei had a handful of deputies who respond to Peronist governors and even four legislators from the Radical Civic Union (UCR), a century-old party that has free public higher education as its banner. Absences and abstentions completed the official strategy to sustain the veto.
The deputies of La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, insisted during the debate on the need to defend the fiscal adjustment that the president has been carrying out for ten months. They also attacked the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), the most important university in the country. “Could it not be that some living people have invented the job [robo] of financing the university with the poor that could be paid for? I am a graduate of a public university, when graduating from the University of Buenos Aires was a source of pride and not the kiosk it has become today,” said deputy José Luis Espert, the president’s most trusted man. He fired above all against the UCR, strong in the universities, and Kirchnerist Peronism.
Before the start of the session, the rector of the UBA, Ricardo Gelpi, warned in an open letter that the Argentine university system “may cease to exist as we know it today.” He defended what he considered a “free, massive and excellent” model, which he considered at risk “like never before in the democratic history” of the South American country. “The Law is very significant because it gives objective parameters to the budget of the entire university system and takes away arbitrariness from governments. We thought that no one could oppose something like this, but unfortunately we were wrong,” he said, referring to Milei’s veto of the financing law.
The president signed the veto in the name of reducing spending. At first, he accused the legislators of being “fiscal degenerates” for not explaining where the money would come from to cover the salary increases established by law. As the days went by, he radicalized his speech to denounce an alleged reluctance of universities to be audited. This Wednesday he insisted on that argument. The claim of the universities, he said, “is a euphemism for the work [robo] “of three or four criminals who use a noble cause and prostitute it to earn money at the expense of stealing it from students and teachers.” He thus placed the university community in the “caste” that he promised to fight when he came to power.
Since Milei came to the Government, state contributions to universities have fallen by 30%. And the amount allocated to the system in the 2025 budget is half of what the rectors demanded. Professors’ salaries also lost 23.7% of their purchasing power to inflation between November 2023 and August 2024, according to Conadu, a federation of university unions. In an attempt to reduce teachers’ resistance, the Government decreed a 6.8% salary increase on the eve of the vote, despite the fact that it had not yet reached an agreement with the unions.
[Noticia en desarrollo. Habrá actualización en breve].
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