Yesterday’s day left a double political and social front that put the tension between the foreground between the Government and the University System. While in Congress the presidential veto was consummated on the budget items for the houses of study, thousands of students, teachers and workers took to the streets of the whole country within the framework of a new University Federal March which sought to make visible the crisis that institutions are going through.
On the political level, the outcome left a forceful message: the official coalition, despite its internal discipline, remains without gathering sufficient strength to impose its agenda when the opposition manages to articulate around demands with high citizen support. The vote against the veto was read as a sign of autonomy of the legislators in front of the Casa Rosada.
The University federal march, Meanwhile, it was consolidated as a symbolic impact fact. The images of thousands of mobilized students, with candles, banners and songs in defense of the public university, reinforced a message that transcends the budgetary situation and that touches deep fibers of social identity in Argentina.
The Legislative Power was the scene of the main political coup. With a large majority, the Chamber decided to reject the veto that the president had applied weeks ago to the law that reinforced university financing. That movement reopened the clued by resources and put libertarian management against a dilemma: abide by the decision of the Congress or hold its adjustment position in the educational area.
The debate in the enclosure was not merely technical. From the opposition blocks it was stressed that national universities are working to the limit, with difficulties to pay basic services and sustain wages, while the ruling defended the veto arguing that there are no sufficient resources in public coffers. That confrontation, which extended for several hours, ended up clarifying clearly against the Executive.
Outside the Parliament, the social thermometer was measured with university mobilization. The columns that converged in Plaza de Mayo and in other provincial capitals exhibited a climate of discomfort that exceeded the academic field, with a participation also marked by social organizations, unions and cultural references. The main slogan was to demand that the continuity of the functioning of public universities be guaranteed.
The march was not limited to Buenos Aires. In Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, Tucumán and La Plata, postcards of full squares and flags in defense of public education were repeated. In each act, a common document prepared by the Interuniversity Front was read, in which a “systematic definance” was denounced and the immediate update of the budget items was claimed.
The Government, on the other hand, maintained a low profile in front of the protest but let its discomfort transcend what happened in Congress. Spokesmen close to the ruling party pointed out that the decision of the senators responds to corporate pressures and warned that, beyond the vote, the Executive will keep the tools to manage the resources according to their economic plan.
That warning opens a scenario of uncertainty about the effective application of what is resolved in Parliament. Jurists consulted in different media pointed out that the rejection of the veto forces the Executive Power to promulgate the original law, although the fine letter of its execution will depend on the political will of the government and the degree of social pressure that manages to sustain the university movement.
The combination of a parliamentary setback and a mass demonstration in the streets leaves the government to one of its greatest challenges since it assumed. The dispute over university financing not only opens a conflict on resources, but also defines a political battlefield in which the real scope of the adjustment and resistance capacity of one of the most emblematic sectors of Argentine society is put into play.
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