PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’

AFP, BUENOS AIRES

Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests.

Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue.

The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit.

A man holds onto a pole amid protests in Buenos Aires on Wednesday against Argentine President Javier Milei’s promise to veto a law to finance universities.

Photo: Reuters

A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress in central Buenos Aires, where demonstrators waved placards reading: “Without education for the people, no peace for the government” and: “How can we have freedom without education?”

Ana Hoqui, a 30-year-old psychology graduate from a village 400km from Buenos Aires who was among the demonstrators, said she was there to support a system that helped her study medicine.

“My parents sacrificed a lot so that I could come study at Buenos Aires University. I could never have trained without the free, public university system,” she told reporters. “That’s why I came to defend it, because I feel it’s in danger.”

Protests were also held in several cities nationwide on Wednesday.

In April, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a show of anger over Milei’s policies after the government froze university funding for this year at the same level as last year, despite persistently high inflation.

The government responded by increasing funding for university hospitals and infrastructure.

At the center of the latest protests was a new law passed by Congress that provided for universities to receive regular funding increases, and for teachers and staff to receive salary increases to counteract the effects of annual inflation of 236 percent in August.

Milei vetoed the law, as he has done with other laws he opposes, after calling the salary increases for teachers “unjustified” and lawmakers “fiscal degenerates.” His decision was published in the official government gazette.

However, the veto could however be overruled by a two-thirds majority in the Argentine Congress, where his party is in a minority.

While the protests were ongoing, Milei met with disgraced Wall Street trader Jordan Belfort, whose corrupt, excess-driven lifestyle was depicted in Martin Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street.”

Belfort posted a picture of the meeting on X, captioned “two passionate advocates for free markets and individual liberty.”