By Oscar Rotundo, Buenos Aires / Argentina
Many speculators announced the end of the government in at least six months, but as the days went by, what seemed to be crumbling, has been consolidated thanks to betrayal and corruption within the traditional political class.
President Javier Milei stated at the event held for the 60th edition of the “Colloquium of IDEA” (the main organization that brings together the Argentine business community): “We were first clear that due to the type of adjustment we were making, it was very likely that the strongest impact would be felt during the first quarter. Therefore, it was also important to do it during vacations, so that people would not find out so much, so to speak, what was happening.”
What the president explains to his benefactors and followers, is that what was articulated in that economic move did not respond to an “adjustment” but to the implementation of a new plan for the destruction of the State and a bold advance on the social and economic conquests of the majority of the population to pay the price of the neoliberal transformation.
The pillars for this transformation are based on job insecurity, the dismantling of health and public education, the advance on the savings capacity of the middle sectors of society and the increase in imports to eliminate small and medium-sized producers.
In the first half of 2024, consumption in Argentina fell by 5.3% year-on-year, according to the Consumption Index (IC) of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services (CAC). In supermarkets and independent self-services the decrease has been 22.3% in September and according to research by the consulting firm Scentia, the contraction in consumption was 10.2% between January and August, with a more pronounced drop in the interior of the country than in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires.
Unemployment in Argentina fell to 7.6% in the second quarter of the year, with a decrease of just 0.1 percentage points compared to the previous quarter, according to official data, taking into account that between October 2023 and May 2024, 142,000 formal jobs were lost.
Registered workers lost 9.9% of their purchasing power against inflation, while informal wages fell by 19.1%, compared to November 2023.
In this scenario, workers have had to face the lack of funding for health and public education, which has led to a profound deterioration in the provision of basic services and has affected the human right to education and health, which are fundamental rights recognized in the Argentine National Constitution and in various international treaties to which our country is a party.
The Central of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic (CTERA), denounced in September of this year that the draft 2025 Budget, presented by the president, represented a loss of real value of 50% for the Educational Programs with respect to what was allocated in 2023. This aggression not only affects the workers of the educational community, but it also affects students and their families and generates a gradual dismantling and a profound deterioration in education.
Such is the arrogance of the government and the irrationality when it comes to implementing its government program, that when the legislative branch rejects a law, the executive vetoes that decision and once returned to Congress, resorts to extortion or gifts so that its will is fulfilled no matter what.
This attitude has generated a mobilizing and rebellious response from the educational community that has proceeded to take, as of October 17, 2024, more than 30 faculties of 25 universities throughout the country, with different modalities of struggles voted in assemblies to confront the university conflict.
What kind of society has the president in mind?
In his theoretical delirium, which leads him to conceive of a society in which each person looks and lives for himself, the State is supplanted by the Market, to which he assigns the task of great social regulator.
According to Milei: Between the mafia and the State, he prefers “the mafia”, because in his opinion the mafia “has codes”, “the mafia complies”, “the mafia does not lie, the mafia competes”. It is evident that, with the shrinking of the State and the absence of its legal and social figure, organized crime, from terror and extortion, by taking possession of the spaces that it leaves, is favored and can carry out its illicit activities, which generate large profits and that logically deposit in banks or invest in other economic activities that allow it to “launder” that money and transform the proceeds of those activities into licit capital activities.
He also declares that “Menem’s first government was the best in Argentine history.” Menem’s government, like his, arose from lies. Carlos Menem advanced in his electoral campaign at the beginning of the 90s, talking about a “Productive Revolution” and the realization of a “wage hike”, something that never happened. Javier Milei promised to go against the “caste” and also stated that, “Before raising a tax he would cut off an arm,” asserting that “the people were not touched, so the adjustment would fall on the expenses made by politics.” But both Menem then and Milei today have lied shamelessly, enjoying media, political and judicial coverage that make up the scaffolding that sustains him in his true political conception, which is none other than to make Argentine society a ghetto that pays tribute for the benefit of the Caste.
The judicial caste, which does not pay income tax, the legislative caste that increases salaries and perks disproportionately, the financial caste that obtains incredible profits through different mechanisms such as money laundering and subsequent capital flight, which is not only, as many think, the physical outflow of dollars, they are also maneuvers that through different operations (legal and illegal) take dollars out of the national financial and banking system; remaining outside the national economy.
The big business of the fugitives is carried out through a recurrent and systematic demand for external financing through indebtedness or foreign investment. To attract capital, the government resorts to processes of sales and privatization of the national patrimony, accompanied by decrees or laws such as decree 70 of 2023 or the Bases Law, (Bases and starting points for the freedom of Argentines) on which the “financial bicycle” is carried out that causes the non-availability in the national economy of savings in dollars for individuals or entrepreneurs. pushing them to buy more expensive in the “illegal” market managed by these “mafias” (which according to the president, have codes).
The foreign assets of residents in the country, at the end of fiscal year 2023, were estimated at 437,398 million dollars, of which 263,020 million concerned currencies and deposits. These are the assets that those who live in the country have, with non-residents, and that must be declared in “Survey of External Assets and Liabilities”, a mandatory information regime for importers and exporters, which is carried out through an affidavit that is sent to the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) through the AFIP (Federal Agency of Public Revenues) website
To complete this panorama of looting of the state coffers, the government has decided to transform the Federal Agency of Public Revenues (AFIP), the tax collection agency, replacing it with the Agency of Collection and Customs Control (ARCA), in order to reduce costs and make the agency “less bureaucratic.”
According to the government, “The creation of ARCA aims to reduce the State, eliminate unnecessary charges,” a 34% reduction in the workforce, which could lead to the dismissal of thousands of workers and “the destruction of corrupt circuits and the improvement in the efficiency of collection and customs control.” but at the head of the reformed and dependent AFIP he appoints Andrés Vázquez, who is accused of fleeing foreign currency and hiding assets abroad for almost half a million dollars, a complaint published in the newspaper La Nación in 2010.
This network of businesses, which they intend to present from deception as a government plan, also contemplates the destruction of sovereignty, commodifying all strategic goods that preserve the integrity and security of the Nation.
To this end, with the complicity of deputies and senators from the supposedly opposition parties, the government obtained the approval of the Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), a tax, customs and exchange flexibility scheme that offers fiscal stability for 30 years to companies that adhere, providing them with incentives, certainty, legal security and a system of protection of acquired rights to the owners of a single investment project, but which must be greater than US$ 200 million. This regime contemplates eight sectors as part of the benefit, they are: forestry, industry, tourism, infrastructure, mining, technology, steel, energy, “oil and gas”. Oil and gas oil and gas revenues, in terms of transport and storage, will have to exceed US$300 million, while those carried out for exploration and exploitation purposes must exceed US$600 million.
A perverse system at the service of multinationals as never before in the country
Among the most important benefits that adhering companies will be able to access are:
- Reduction of the Income Tax rate to 25%
- Accelerated depreciation of movable property and infrastructure
- Transfer of unabsorbed tax losses within the first 5 years
- Unrestricted access to the foreign exchange market to pay profits, dividends and interest
- Protection of VPU assets and investments
- Right to continued operation of the project
- Unfettered access to justice.
If they were “Long-Term Strategic Exports”, the deadlines would be:
Twenty percent after one year has elapsed from the date of implementation of the Single Project Vehicles (VPU)*; Forty percent after two years have elapsed from the date on which the VPU is put into operation; One hundred percent after three years have elapsed from the date of implementation of the VPU.
Another link in this chain of plunder is that companies that litigate with the country will be able to do so through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which has a history of conflicts, payments and pending disputes. The ICSID is an institution of the World Bank to resolve international disputes, mainly between States and investors, it should be remembered that after the enactment of Law 25,561, the holders of shares of Argentine companies filed 58 cases in the ICSID, with requests for economic compensation for more than 50,000 million U$S and that in 2005 the ICSID ruled against Argentina in favor of the U.S. company CMS Gas for a freeze of tariffs, and ordered the country to compensate it in 133.2 million U$S.
If this web of prey is prolonged over time, our aspirations to be a sovereign country will become an eternal dream, in the same way we are committed to the military geopolitical plot of Atlanticist unipolarism led by the United States and Great Britain that is favored with each action of the government.
This interventionist military presence of the United States, which, in a shameless way, gives its opinion and acts from the figure of its ambassador Marc Stanley and the commander of the United States Southern Command Laura Richardson, not only focuses on the natural resources of our territory, it also monitors the concession for the exploitation of them.
The relationship of the government with the United States and Great Britain has transformed us into a de facto colony since its scope is of historical significance. Stanley expressed in an interview, “Since Milei assumed the presidency in December 2023, the United States has sent to Argentina “officials from the Department of Energy and the Treasury, as well as representatives of the Department of Defense, SOUTHCOM, Homeland Security, the DEA, the CIA, the Senate and the White House,” among others. We want it to work,” he added.
Regarding the relationship with Great Britain, we move from the “dispute” to the most blatant surrender that not only violates the First Transitory Clause of the National Constitution, in which it is stated that “The Argentine State reaffirms in a forceful manner its position regarding an issue of great historical and political relevance: sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands, South Georgia and South Sandwich”, advancing on the spurious agreements of former Macri Foreign Minister Foradori (Foradori-Duncan agreement signed in 2016). Mondino, Milei’s foreign minister, naturalizes the relationship of usurpation, leaving the claim for sovereignty at the declamatory level, agreeing with Great Britain, to relaunch the weekly trip that departs from São Paulo (Brazil) to the Islands, with a monthly stopover in the Argentine province of Córdoba. It also becomes serious and unacceptable to cooperate in the exploitation of British-controlled fisheries in a vast region of the South Atlantic, and to allow both military development that transforms the islands into a nuclear military base, as well as the oil exploration and exploitation agreements that are already being carried out with the Zionist company Navitas Petroleum, the same that in 2022 was sanctioned for operating on the Argentine continental shelf without the corresponding authorization.
In this scenario, a large part of the political leadership is thinking about the legislative elections of 2025, the media are concerned about the life and work of the tenant of “la Rosada” and ordinary people are trying to cope with their survival in the most dignified way possible. Many resist in the streets to each new blow to the popular economy, but that is not enough.
* Single Project Vehicle (VPU) is an entity that is constituted to apply for membership of the RIGI and carry out a single investment project.