Its Senate Argentinian approved yesterday Wednesday night (early this morning Greek time) a package of sweeping economic reforms proposed by the far-right, extreme liberal president’s government Javier Millay in principle. The voting procedure by article is now expected to begin.

The process was deadlocked – 36 members were in favor and the same number against – before the country’s vice president Victoria Villaroel voted in favor.

“For the Argentinians who are suffering, who are waiting, who do not want their children to leave the country, I am voting yes,” said the vice-president, who is ex-officio president of the Senate.

Outside the chambers of parliament, meanwhile, clashes between law enforcement forces were raging.

The incidents broke out when protesters tried to breach the security perimeter around the parliament, where the controversial “general law” incorporating a series of reforms, especially privatisation, was being debated.

Seven people, including five opposition MPs, needed hospital treatment, according to the health ministry, as they suffered breathing problems due to the widespread use of tear gas by law enforcement forces.

Vehicles were set on fire and police tried to repel object-throwing youths using rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas.

At least ten people were arrested and nine police officers were injured, a spokesman for the security service told AFP. As night fell, police forces were trying to complete the operation to regain control of the roads.

The presidency of Argentina spoke of “terrorist” organizations, which, using “bats, stones and even grenades” attempted to carry out “a coup”.

“A Century Back”

Senators have been debating since yesterday morning the new version of the Miley government’s reform package, which was rejected in its original form, which contained 600 articles and was adopted with several major amendments and a total of 238 articles by the House in April.

Among the concessions the government was forced to make, which began to show more pragmatism as the months progressed, was the reduction of privatizations from around forty to fewer than ten. However, the privatization of the public carrier, Aerolíneas Argentinas, remained on the table.

The labor market flexibility program was also under discussion, while tax reform, originally included in the so-called “omnibus” (general) law, was separated from it and is expected to be considered separately.

The opposition senator Mariano Recalde judged that with this law, especially the labor law reforms, “we are going back a century, when the worker had no rights”.

“We can’t believe that in Argentina we are debating a law that goes back a hundred years,” said Fabio Nunes, a 55-year-old lawyer protesting outside parliament.

The law is an “accelerator, a catalyst for economic recovery,” Economy Minister Luis Caputo countered yesterday, calling on parliament to approve it. However, seeming to discount his rejection, he emphasized that even in this case “nothing will change” because “this country will recover on its own, as this government will not change course”, the “macroeconomic order will continue”.

In addition to this law, the “shock therapy”, the “biggest fiscal adjustment in the history of mankind”, as he likes to repeat, has started since December, with a large devaluation of the peso (-54%), price “liberation” and rent, end of transport, energy subsidies, freezing of public works, spending cuts everywhere and so on.

President Millay boasts that he has “subdued” inflation, which has been falling steadily for the past five months, from 25% to 8.8% in April. It also celebrated a first-quarter primary surplus, a 16-year high.

But austerity policy is strangling consumption, economic activity has collapsed and the country has slipped into recession, with GDP shrinking 5.3% in the first quarter and no sign of an imminent recovery.

“From the IMF to foreign investors, many actors say that in order for the proposal (of President Miley) to be credible, laws must be passed by the parliament, agreements must be signed, the state must function more or less”, according to Ivan Suliaker, a political scientist at the University of San Martin.

But six months after assuming the presidency, Mr. Millay has yet to secure parliamentary approval of a single measure, with the parliamentary numbers stacked against him. His small party, Libertad Avanza, is third in the House and in the Senate it has only seven of the 72 members.

Before revising the “general law,” the Senate in March rejected an executive order containing measures to deal with the “state of emergency” signed by the president.