By Roberto Follari, Special for the day
The speech that “there is great social support for Milei” is over, repeated even by the media not addicted to the government. Not only does it have the worst favorable rating of any Argentine government in decades (for 140 days in office), but now around a million Argentines decisively occupied the streets of the country to reject its measures.
Surprisingly, it was Córdoba and Mendoza – the two provinces closest to Mileism – that showed the strongest mobilizations, with 70,000 and 50,000 people respectively. Human tides that show that social patience is beginning to wear out, even in places where it seemed intact.
But in addition to the approximately 600,000 people estimated in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, there were large marches in the most remote places in the country: in Colón (Entre Ríos), in Merlo (San Luis), in Tandil (Buenos Aires). The entire Argentina was mobilized. The university became what the theorist Laclau called “empty signifier,” a space where everyone connected their own meaning and their own disagreement. It was a demonstration made from and by the universities, but it had the endorsement and support of a huge social sector beyond these institutions.
Milei was shown that traditions and identities so deeply rooted in the national imagination cannot be completely crushed. Public education cannot be destroyed without reaction or protest. The country that produced the university reform of 1918, of enormous international scope, and that decreed free studies in 1949 – today being one of the few free in the world – is not going to renounce that history without further ado. Thus, the social warning thundered throughout the country.
Aside from the previous hesitation of some authorities, finally the Rectors put themselves at the forefront of the protest, as well as many deans: academic advisors and superiors, teachers, administrators, students in large numbers, retirees. All institutional actors were there. Thousands and thousands of young people – many of whom have voted for Milei – turned their backs on the president, at least as far as he is concerned with this issue.
The government claims that it does not want to close the universities. Thank goodness he says it, because it’s not what it seems. If you maintain the same budget as 2023 for 2024, with an interannual inflation of more than 200%, you are leading to closure due to budgetary asphyxiation. That way universities cannot go beyond May.
Furthermore, the advertised two-fold increase of 70% – which would be well below the inflationary jump – applies only to 10% of the total budget, which are operating expenses. 90% are personnel expenses, they are salaries: the increase does not go to them, but only to that remaining 10%. It is only a 7% increase, which will always be welcome but is not even a start.
The verbal attacks that the government attempted against the universities are worthy of analysis. One was the clumsy drawing of the lion drinking “left-handed tears” posted by the president, who seems to have not read the size of the protest, and believes that offense is still a good mechanism in the face of the mass movement. He then tried to rectify himself, but in his style he could not stop attacking the protesters.
A rather unusual argument is that of the alleged audits to be carried out by the Executive. An Executive who is not responsible for doing them: the AGN does them. And they are already done, in addition to the internal ones that each university practices.
But it is clear that universities are not protesting against any audit: they are protesting because they are not given an adequate budget. The story of the audit is a smokescreen: it was put in place by the government to cover up the problem of its lack of sufficient financing, very typical of the logic of Zero Deficit and the State considered a “criminal organization.”
On the other hand, our universities not only do not spend more: they spend less. With more students to serve and higher relative quality than those in Mexico or Brazil, their teachers earn between 3 and 5 times less than in those countries. So the “big boxes” that the government intends to audit are not so big: perhaps it would be better to audit the reserved expenses that have now been assigned to the AFI, for example. Those that are not used to teach or investigate, but to spy and – at least that was the case in Macri’s time – even to persecute.
It has become a sport to go out and speak against universities, even though everything about them is ignored. This was the case of a minor character like the ultra-liberal Boggiano, who allowed himself to point out that universities are not evaluated. Mr. Boggiano is unaware of CONEAU, which evaluates postgraduate courses, complete universities, and many undergraduate courses. The one who should be evaluated is him, who like many others, speaks without knowing in search of discrediting institutions that have earned an appreciation for long years of activity and history.
The deafness of Congress
The night before the mobilization, Milei tried to counteract it with a curious national channel – a resource so despised in other times -: its surplus numbers were of little interest to the population. These numbers are not useful when buying at the supermarket or the grocery store: even if inflation were to go down, salaries do not allow us to buy anything, and the drop in almost all production and consumption indices confirms this.
The cost increases continue: in Mendoza they have affected electricity and urban and interurban transportation, with percentages close to 300%. In the rest of the country, rates are also rising this month: instead of improving purchasing power, we are going to worsen it. Next week fuel prices will rise for the umpteenth time.
And the sambenito that “with the previous government, we were already doing badly” does not apply. That is undoubtedly true, but now things are much worse: the fall is much more extreme and faster. The situation is incomparably worse for the family pocket. Furthermore, the government does the Zero Deficit thing not because of any inheritance: it is because that is its program, because it is the only thing it knows how to do. The always colorful Adorni – who already has a sister and a brother in high government positions, in addition to having been promoted – said it clearly: the adjustment has no end, the chainsaw has arrived forever, at least as long as the liberal government is in place. libertarian.
The government celebrates that inflation – which it itself raised to 25% monthly in December – is now at the rate with which it received it: that is the achievement, made at the cost of a brutal recession, and a sharp increase in unemployment and poverty. But that itself hangs by a thread: not only have rates risen in April (Milei postponed the gas increase, because he noticed that social support is not enough), but there may be devaluation. And in that case, the inflation number would shoot higher.
It is already known: while the government needs dollars, the farm owners sit on the silo exchanges and will sell when they have a higher exchange rate. We’ll see how that decisive bid continues. Meanwhile, the government is looking for “the greens”, but the IMF does not go beyond verbal praise: this government is still not trustworthy. And now an absurd delegation is going to China to beg for the famous “swap”, while here Espert’s clumsiness leads him to join forces with the Taiwanese Embassy (which is in total confrontation with the Chinese government). After the policy of insulting and mocking the great power, it is difficult to achieve much. The Chinese don’t make noise, but they know how to get nuts. And they are immovable.
The government proudly shows that it has obtained 11 billion dollars for the Central Bank during its administration. The problem is that it owes 10 billion unpaid to importers: with what it also owes to Camesa – the state energy company – it is already above the amounts achieved. You owe more than you have. And this also raises tensions on the stability of the US currency.
A distracted Congress
Notoriously, there are legislators who believe they can do anything. And they are wrong. What happened with the ineffable De Loredo shows it. The UCR? that he cried when “his” Milei government could not impose the omnibus law – a remarkable mistake -, he believed that one can ring bells and be in the procession at the same time. And he launched a march through the university, in total opposition to his open collaboration and subordination to the national government (a few days before he had gone with other legislators to reach agreements within the Casa Rosada).
As was obviously expected, he was booed and disowned. Undeterred, the next day he made statements at the doors of Congress justifying… not having given a quorum to discuss the university issue!! In 24 hours, new blatant contradiction. The screams of a bus driver alerted him that his game was already irritating him beyond his native Córdoba: those screams were played on repeat on TV for the entire country.
The man from Córdoba, with an indefinable location in the facts but extreme right-wing in his ideology – not for nothing is he close to the “military” Aguad – justifies his support for the government by saying that “as a radical, I am a reformist.” Of course, he is a little confused: he wants to base his support for the labor reform that he negotiated with Milei, with what was the anti-elite Reform of the university in 1918. Any transport is good for him, it seems, as long as it is called “reform.” : It doesn’t matter if you go North or South.
The truth is that Congress turns a deaf ear to the monumental mobilization of Tuesday the 23rd. Not all of Congress: for now it is only Deputies. It will approve with some modifications the Omnibus law, in an abbreviated but not harmless version. He refused to address the university issue, although the opposition was close to quorum (only five more legislators were missing). Now, from UPP they denounce that the Menem of Deputies – he is not the only Menem in the twists and turns of the government – refuses to meet to discuss the DNU. While many “light” opponents would support the law but not the DNU, they want to hold one session but not the other.
Meanwhile, if the law is imposed in Deputies, it will still have to go through Senators. It is not obvious that it will get the necessary support there: it now includes the famous labor reform, although diluted in some of its extremes, less burdensome in its scope.
Meanwhile at the ultra-liberal Libertad Foundation, Milei gave a disconcerting speech with verbal games, noises and imitations that were celebrated with laughter – sometimes uncomfortable – from the attendees. Her subtlety in describing how the country “will go up” was at the level of a tavern when the lack of control has advanced.
And Cristina has launched this Saturday to resume her public voice; The mobilization authorizes opposition voices. She is the strongest figure against the government, although hit by the poor results of the previous administration and by the media campaigns against her. From the high social indexes of her presidency, she begins to draw a necessary alternative discourse. For the inside of Peronism, the balance is difficult: in no way retire her as a marginal Guillermo Moreno would want, but it is not obvious that today Cristina could lead the entire movement. We will have to see how an opposition located until now in silence and perplexity begins to awaken, while the CGT protests for Worker’s Day and May 9 predict the growing continuity of social mobilization.
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