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Argentina: Senate gives thumbs down to Milei's DNU

“I am not going to become Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,” Villarruel said

Argentina's Senate Thursday voted by 42 to 25 and 4 abstentions against President Javier Milei's most-encompassing emergency Decree (DNU) 70/23 which will nonetheless remain in force pending next week's outcome at the Lower House. A positive result would keep the measure alive barring any declaration of unconstitutionality by the courts.

Thursday's events further strained things between Casa Rosada and Congress, particularly between Milei and Vice President Victoria Villarruel, who as Senate Speaker included the DNU on the day's agenda, which lawmakers on the Libertarian camp claim she could have avoided to prevent a second legislative blow to the current administration following the flop of the so-called Omnibus Law bill.

Villarruel had fended off several requests to add the DNU to the order of the day but finally succumbed to pressure from Kirchnerism and other federal blocs. On Wednesday, she once again tried to adjourn the matter but to no avail, which earned her strong criticism from within the ruling LLA camp, mostly on social media.

Interior Minister Guillermo Francos explained that Villarruel could have dodged the matter but gave in to pressure, which prompted a harsh statement from the Office of the President (OPRA), who blamed the political forces for trying to impose their course of action astray from Milei's roadmap to the so-called May Pact.

“This decision is an attempt to undermine the May Pact,” the OPRA claimed in a new communiqué after Thursday's vote and insisted that such an understanding “constitutes a foundational agreement aimed at establishing ten State policies that will allow building a new economic order, rescuing Argentina from the path of failure and reinserting it in the necessary path to become a world power again.”

“This agreement, long demanded by the political class for decades but that no one has dared to call, necessarily requires the goodwill of all sectors of national political life,” Thursday's document went on.

The same House that let through almost 500 DNUs under Kirchnerism “has been in charge of rejecting the DNU of Javier Milei only three months after his inauguration” and it is therefore “impossible to interpret this decision in any other way than as an attempt to undermine the May Pact, the National Government and the change elected by the Argentine people,” it added.

“In his speech on the State of the Nation, the President raised two alternatives: agreement or confrontation. The time has come for the political class to decide which side of history it wants to be on,” it concluded.

Despite mounting rumors that she was plotting to undermine Milei's political stance amid growing unrest, Vice President Villarruel contended that her commitment to the head of state was “unwavering” and denied the existence of a quarrel between the two of them. “The Senate is an independent power. There is no government without institutionality,” she also argued.

“My commitment to Argentina and Javier Milei is unwavering. From the moment Javier Milei asked me to accompany him as deputy and then on the presidential ticket we knew what we were facing and we have worked back to back, despite the tireless attempts to divide us. The Senate is the House of the Provinces and it is an independent power of the Argentine Republic. I am not going to become Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. I am not going to become what we came to change,” Villarruel stressed.