Neither La Libertad Avanza nor the opposition have the numbers in the lower house yet to decide whether the President should veto retirement mobility.
Nobody goes to the Chamber of Deputies. Deputies to lose a vote. With that unwritten law of politics but inexorable in legislative practice, the veto of Javier Milei This week begins a slow journey through the Congress where it should be turned over to commissions while, in parallel, Freedom Advances and the opposition are fighting for the thirds necessary to define the fate of the presidential veto of the retirement mobility law.
Decree 782/2024 published this Monday in the Official Gazette provides for the total veto of Law 27,756, which provides for an 8.1% improvement in pensions under the argument, expressed in its recitals, of preserving fiscal balance. Once the National Executive Branch enters it through the reception desk of the Honorable Chamber of Deputies of the Nation, as the chamber of origin of the legislative initiative, it must be sent by Martin Menem at Budget and Finance and Social Security and Welfare Committees for the signing of rejection or acceptance opinions.
Negotiations in the House of Representatives
There a negotiation will open where the opposition blocks will seek the majority of two thirds of the chamber to reject the veto, a decision that should be replicated in the Senate to annul that presidential decree. No one has yet enough numbers to go to a fight vote by vote in a special session that must be called by the opposition. Freedom Advances It is in her favor that the timeframes are stretched while the veto is in force. It is valid just like the Decree 70/2023the backbone of Javier Milei’s deregulatory program that eliminated the price cap on prepaid health plans, repealed the rental law and freed up credit card charges. This DNU, rejected in March by the Senate, is awaiting treatment in Deputies to resolve its definitive validity. The opposition blocs did not call a session almost six months ago to overturn that decree because they do not have the number.
There is also not yet a consolidated opposition bloc of two thirds to call a session against the veto on retirement mobility. Absences play a key role considering that the votes are handled more by the governors than by the leaders of the bloc. If the presence of deputies in the chamber decreases, the combo of Freedom Advances, the PRO and the MIDplus allies, has 77 legislators, almost the third necessary to block the rejection of the veto. In the session of DeputiesThe improvement for retirees was approved with 160 votes, but that day there were 16 absences and 8 abstentions. Most of the absences were from the PRO, while the governors are swinging between supporting the law and abstentions.
Complaints to Javier Milei
Now a new negotiation is opening up that includes the claim for the paralysis of the public works of the governors, the debts of the Nation with the provincial pension funds not transferred, the preparation of the 2025 ballot in the provinces and especially, the conflict between the City of Buenos Aires and the national government for the debt of co-participation funds and the removal of transport subsidies in CABA. These two conflicts have a direct impact on the waterline of the Milei-Macri link and they gauge the degree of opposition that the PRO exerts in Congress.
While Mauricio Macri tries to get its legislators on track, provincial leaders report more to Karina Milei that the former president. On the table of the general secretariat of the Presidency the electoral assembly is being cooked up for the legislative elections of next year and the governors urgently need an agreement with Freedom Advances to face Peronism on the same ticket. Financial and political emergencies that Macri cannot resolve.
Freedom Advances in Congress
But Milei must also get his own troops on track if he wants to protect the veto on retirement mobility in Congress. That is why last night he rehearsed an ecumenical message with praise for Victoria Villarruel’s own agenda and the internal divergences of Freedom AdvancesThe President wanted to encapsulate the crisis of the block of deputies with the solitary expulsion of Lourdes Arrieta. A kind of “leading case” to teach the rebels a lesson. However, the map of allies is narrowing. You no longer figure in the calls to the Casa Rosada Neither Miguel Pichetto’s Federal Meeting nor Rodrigo de Loredo’s UCRpromoter of the retirement mobility law that Milei vetoed.
While the Casa Rosada could achieve a legislative victory in Deputiesby delaying the opposition’s call for a session to reject the veto, the ruling party will end up paying a political cost in public opinion for vetoing the retirement mobility. At least that will be the objective of the opposition that is already working on the call for a march through the CGT, the social movements and also the government of the province of Buenos Aires for the day when the veto is to be voted on in the Chamber of Deputies. Some chieftains of the Chamber remember that Mauricio Macrias President, tried in 2017 to approve a pension reform in Congress that triggered a massive mobilization where “tons” of stones were thrown.
Source: Ambito
