Bloody clashes between demonstrators and riot police on the streets and bitter political debate late into the night. The right-wing populist Javier Milei's radical overhaul of Argentina is not going smoothly – but now the Senate has given an overall yes.
Throughout Wednesday, police used pepper spray, tear gas, and water cannons on the streets around Congress in Buenos Aires. A number of demonstrators and police are reported to have been injured in the street battles, which lasted for hours.
Cars were set on fire during the angry protests directed against the ultra-liberal President Javier Milei's legislative package being debated in the Senate. After eleven hours of debate, the senators voted yes to the package as a whole. But then votes on each article began, a procedure expected to continue into the morning.
Among the radical proposals is a one-year economic emergency decree to allow the President to privatise a range of publicly owned companies, weakened employment protection, limited access to guaranteed pensions, and tax incentives to promote investment.
The opposition warns that the overhaul is so far-reaching that it would erase decades of development.
Milei and his government describe it instead as a necessary next step on the path to fundamentally transforming Argentina's crisis-ridden economy. The President lacks a majority in Congress, and a more radical first version of the legislative package was previously voted down. The toned-down version being debated was approved by the Lower House, the Chamber of Deputies, in April.
The President has previously, by decree, among other things, cut 50,000 public sector jobs and abolished fuel and transport subsidies.
