Buenos Aires Herald 
President Javier Milei’s administration accused political leaders of rejecting his “May Pact” and challenged them to “choose what side of history [they] want to be on” after the Senate voted 42-25 to reject his presidential mega-decree on Thursday night.
Allies have reacted with anger and accusations of cronyism, while the center-right Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) party, whose votes were split, publicly expressed their differences. The result also underscored divisions between Milei and vice President Victoria Villarruel, whom libertarians have excoriated for tabling the decree without first securing enough votes.
The decree, an unprecedented 366 articles long, will remain in force unless the Lower House also rejects it. However, the defeat is a blow to Milei: it is the first decree ever to be voted down in the Senate.
“The same chamber that approved nearly 500 Kirchnerist Decrees of Necessity and Urgency (DNU), took care to reject President Javier Milei’s DNU just 3 months after his inauguration,” read a statement published by the president’s press team on X Thursday night.
“It is impossible to interpret this as anything other than an attempt to undermine the May Pact, the National Government and the change chosen by Argentines.”
Released on December 20, 2023, Milei’s mega-decree declared a financial, fiscal, and administrative “emergency” in Argentina while mandating wide-scale deregulation, the repeal of hundreds of laws protecting Argentine workers, and limitations on benefits such as severance pay and maternity leave.
During his speech for the opening of Congress on March 1, Milei invited political leaders to sign a “May pact” in Córdoba on May 25, signaling a mutual commitment to issues such as tax and labor reform and fiscal balance. The invitation was taken as an olive branch after weeks of threats and brinksmanship between the president and Argentina’s governors and other leaders, after his flagship omnibus bill reform package collapsed in the Chamber of Deputies.
Describing the Senate vote, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, of the right-wing PRO party, said she had “never seen anything like it” and that “resistance to change and the defense of political privileges is very deep.”
UCR tensions
During the debate, UCR Senator Martín Lousteau lambasted the decree. “I’m voting against this DNU and the reason is simple: the DNU is unconstitutional,” he said. He also criticized the president’s personality, online presence, and the tensions that preluded Thursday’s session.
“[Milei] is a president who lies, [who] says he doesn’t know what he signs, and a president who attacks his vice president,” Lousteau continued. “He accumulates power and instills fear so I don’t think we should give a person like that a DNU, on top of it being unconstitutional.”
However, UCR senators’ votes were split in the final vote. Ten voted to approve it, two rejected it, and one abstained.
UCR members including the governors of Corrientes, Mendoza, Jujuy and Chaco, as well as the party’s bloc leaders for both chambers of Congress, published a statement committing to “support the debate and the backing of necessary reform in the national government, to rescue society […] from the poverty into which Kirchnerism’s negationist, discriminatory and corrupt model had plunged it.”
They added that they back the government’s efforts to balance the nation’s books.
The Peronist Unión por la Patria opposition coalition celebrated the blow to the decree. Senator and former Interior Minister Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro celebrated the rejection of a “megadecree of deregulation that laid the foundation for the devastation of Argentines’ rights and economy” on his X account.
Deputy and former presidential candidate for the Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas, Myriam Bregman, said via social media that the lower house “has no more excuses” to reject the decree.
Argentina’s biggest union federation, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT in Spanish), took to X as well. “The working of democratic institutions is the base for the republic’s control over the Executive branch,” it wrote.
