New Argentine president's first economic shake-up plan sparks protests

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires after Argentina’s new far-right President Javier Milei signed an emergency decree outlining several controversial economic reforms. 

Representing the unemployed, anti-Milei demonstrators made their way to the iconic Plaza de Mayo Square, chanting “Milei! You’re garbage! You’re the dictatorship!”

Eduardo Belliboni, who leads the leftist protest group Polo Obrero that organized the demonstration, said protesters do not want any type of confrontation.  

Social leader and politician Juan Grabois said Milei had ordered the “establishment of an absolute monarchy … bent on using heavy ammunition to attack the country’s middle and lower classes.”

Milei, inaugurated on December 10, has promised a dramatic shake-up of Argentina’s moribund economy amid rampant inflation and widespread poverty.

Argentina’s annual inflation rate stands at 161 percent. Four out of every 10 people are poor. The country owes $45 billion to the International Monetary Fund.

On Wednesday night Milei appeared on television, flanked by 12 stony-faced ministers and top officials, to unveil a decree he claimed would haul the South American country out of “the economic hell we are now living through”.

Milei’s decree paves the way for the privatization of state-owned companies, strips away workers’ rights including maternity leave, ends limits on exports, and alters housing rental and land ownership laws to allow for foreign investment.

Last week, he declared a 54% devaluation of the peso and suspended all public work, saying Argentina “required an urgent change of direction to avoid disaster” and hyperinflation.  

The policies delighted supporters of the far-right populist, who is often compared to the former presidents of the US and Brazil, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.  

But they infuriated the opposition and many ordinary citizens, who took to their balconies immediately after the president’s address to protest by banging pots and pans.

Soon the dissent spread to the streets as people began blocking roads in different parts of the capital. By the early hours of Thursday thousands of protesters had congregated in the plaza outside congress.

His security minister Patricia Bullrich also presented a “protocol” enabling federal forces to clear protesters blocking streets without a judicial order.

Some social organizations say the protocol goes too far and compromises the right to protest.

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