By Stella Calloni on December 10, 2024 from Buenos Aires
Argentine pensioners protest Milei’s austerity
Today marks one year since the inauguration of President Javier Milei, of the ultra-right alliance La Libertad Avanza (LLA). The situation is worsening and the permanent lying and falsification of data and figures are denounced every day by the alternative press, because the ruler, who considers himself as a “mole infiltrated to destroy the national State from within”, has under his control most of the local mass media, headed by Grupo Clarín and La Nación and others that were the same press that installed him during his electoral campaign with his chainsaw.
The most important thing to remember is that he reached the government supposedly for having achieved “miraculously” 56.6 percent of votes, which surprised the world, without anyone waiting for the final tally which made it clear that LLA never reached even 50 percent with its partners of the right-wing alliance Cambiemos which gathered the Republican Proposal (PRO) and the Radical Civic Union (UCR), now divided.
The well-known writer and journalist Mempo Giardinellí made known the true figures of the scrutiny last February in Página /12, since officially in the second round the “blank votes and abstentions” must be counted. The final results “that confused the Argentine people were misleadingly misanalyzed and mispublicized”, said Giardinelli, who pointed out that “the now president received the votes of only 40.31 percent of the electoral roll qualified to vote, which is not the same”.
In other words, “almost 60 percent, that is well over half of the population that did not vote for him to preside over this Republic”, warned the writer, who heads the Manifiesto Argentino, which constantly denounces the surrender of national sovereignty, with precise and accurate data.
With reference to the result of the elections that brought Milei to the government, he maintains that “affirming and propagandizing the contrary (that he had won by 56 6 percent) was a maneuver, and a malicious and not at all innocent story” with the data obtained from the scrutiny that nobody bothered to look for.
In turn, Sergio Massa, of the Peronist party Unión por la Patria, received 32 percent of the total, the journalist points out when recalling that “only 76 percent of the electoral roll voted, thus being one of the lowest records of all our democratic life”.
On the other hand, what is known in the last hours that there are four million new poor people and two million 500 thousand indigent people in the whole country. The Social Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University (UCA) records that 49.9 percent of the population is poor. Almost half of the country is below the poverty line, that is, 23 million people.
In turn, the Center for the Recovery of Argentina of the School of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires affirms that indigence reaches six million people. Poverty among children under 18 years of age amounts to 65.5 percent.
These figures are generally hidden by the same press that installed Milei during the campaign. Today, the images of 300 people who were fired by telephone from the well-known company Avon, most of them with more than 20 years of work, join thousands of dismissed people, which may reach the figure of almost half a million in the whole country, taking into account the paralyzation of public works, which means a high number of construction workers.
The announcement which is considered to be the most cruel is the suspension of the delivery of free medicines to retirees, who receive minimum pensions. It is impossible for millions of Argentines to make ends meet with the ever-rising increases in foodstuffs and rates for essential services. This is happening for the first time in the history of the period of “democratic recovery”, and it means the death sentence for millions of retirees, who are also beaten and mistreated in their peaceful marches every Wednesday.
It also advances in the alliance with international fascism, being the only country that did not vote in favor of the native peoples and devastated all the gender policies democratically installed in this country. It also openly supports the genocide of the Palestinian people, while accompanying the declared war criminal Benjamin Netanhyahu.
This day the Group of Priests of the Option for the Poor, left in the slums by Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, before taking office as Pope Francis in the Vatican, accused Milei of “governing by force of decrees and vetoes, justifying everything with, “always falsified numbers, generating increasing hunger in the population and promoting the law of the jungle in the name of a false freedom. It is the triumph of individualism, racism and hatred, leading to social disintegration”, they point out.
In the name of a supposed freedom, he lost his homeland, he lost hope and freedom continues to recede. With his contempt for Latin America, every day he takes steps in the surrendering of the country to the United States and Israel. In fact, the South Atlantic is controlled by both of them and by Great Britain, so much so that the Malvinas Islands are off the agenda.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English